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launch

ISRO engineers successfully completed the first of six orbit raising “Midnight Maneuver” burns at 01:17 hrs IST

Nov. 6

The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will

eventually arrive at the Mars Sphere of Influence after a 10 month interplanetary cruise

India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight to Mars

The launch “placed MOM very precisely into an initial elliptical orbit around Earth

ISRO’s engineers devised a

procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over the next several weeks – and at an extremely low cost

engine fires when

is at its closest point in orbit above Earth. This increases the ships velocity and gradually widens the ellipse

raises the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory

expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day

voyage

arrives in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014

, NASA’s

MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch

on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida

Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal

study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost

MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history

Additionally, missions such as Hubble, Fermi and Swift will receive continued funding

only mission that took a hit was the Spitzer infrared telescope, which – as of now — will be closed out in 2015, which is sooner than requested.

Senior Review of missions takes place every two years

In the Review, missions are ranked as which are most successful

previous Senior Reviews led to the removal of funding for the weakest 10-20% of extended missions

Hubble Space Telescope will continue at the currently funded levels

Chandra will also continue at current levels, but its Guest Observer budget will actually be increased to account for decreases in Fiscal Year 2011

Fermi operations are extended through FY16, with a 10 percent per year reduction starting in FY14.

Swift and Kepler mission operations are extended through FY16, including funding for data analysis.

Planck will support one year extended operations of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI).

Spitzer’s operations are extended through FY14 with closeout in FY15

U.S. science support of Suzaku is extended to March 2015.

Funding for U.S. support of XMM-Newton is extended through March 2015.

all FY15-FY16 decisions are for planning purposes and they will be revisited in the 2014 Senior Review

paper Tito plans to present at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in March, which discusses

a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars

no going into orbit or landing

Such a 501-day mission would launch in January 2018, “using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket,”

existing environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission,

Crew comfort is limited to survival needs only.

sponge baths are acceptable, with no need for showers

the paper outlines how NASA would also have a role in this mission in terms of supporting key life support and thermal protection systems, even though this is a private-sector effort

No estimates of what such a mission would cost are included in the paper, but it does say it would be financed privately

The paper adds that if they miss this favorable 2018 opportunity, the next chance to take advantage of this lower energy trajectory would be in 2031.

investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets

continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU

Second mission: International Cometary Explorer

On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE)

The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere

a series of lunar orbits over the next 15 months. Its last and closest pass over the Moon, on December 22, 1983, was a mere 119.4 km above the Moon's surface. By the beginning of 1984, ICE was in heliocentric orbit

Giacobini-Zinner encounter

on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner.

On 11 September 1985, the craft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner

ICE carried no cameras. It instead carried instruments for measurements of energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields

Halley encounter

transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft

were in the vicinity of Comet Halley

ICE flew through the tail

Heliospheric mission

mission was approved by NASA in 1991

consisting of investigations of coronal mass ejections in coordination with ground-based observations

End of mission

On May 5, 1997, NASA ended the ICE mission, and ordered the probe shut down, with only a carrier signal left operating

Further contact

In 1999, NASA made brief contact with ICE to verify its carrier signal. On September 18, 2008

NASA, with the help of KinetX, located ICE using the Deep Space Network after discovering that it had not been powered off after the 1999 contact

status check revealed that all but one of its 13 experiments were still functioning, and it still has enough propellant

Reboot effort

A team webpage said, "We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission...If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing."

Sometime after NASA's interest in the ICE waned

A team of engineers, programmers, and scientists

realized that the spacecraft might be steered to pass close to another comet

began to study the feasibility and challenges involved

On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal

which will cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas

The project then set a 'stretch' goal of $150,000

The project members are working on deadline: if they get the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, it can use the Moon's gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.

Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center had said that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible

oject members obtained the needed hardware (power amplifier, modulator/demodulator[12]), and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014

Although NASA is not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact

On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project

"This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again," officials said

Step 1: Launch

from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. SpaceX has use of the facility's Space Launch Complex 40

The initial ascent is powered by Falcon 9's first stage, consisting of nine SpaceX Merlin 1C rocket engines

Step 2: Main Engine Cut Off/Stage Separation

At a little before 180 seconds into the flight, the Falcon 9's first stage engines will cut off, and the first stage will drop off, falling back to Earth

the booster's second stage engines should start, further propelling the vehicle into orbit.

Step 3: Payload Separation

Around 9 minutes into the flight, the Dragon capsule should separate from Falcon 9's second stage and orbit on its own

capsule will deploy its solar arrays to start soaking up energy from the sun

Dragon is on its own and must maneuver using its onboard thrusters

Step 4: Orbital Checkouts

Dragon will begin a series of checkouts to make sure it's functioning as designed and ready to meet up with the station

test out its abort system to prove it can terminate its activities and move away from the space station if something goes wrong.

demonstrate its performance in free drift phase, with thrusters inhibited

Teams on the ground will lead the vehicle through tests of

Absolute GPS (AGPS) system, which uses global positioning system satellites to determine its location in space

Step 5: Fly-Under

fire its thrusters to perform a fly-under of the International Space Station

to 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) below the outpost

make radio contact with the station using a system called the COTS Ultra?high frequency Communication Unit to communicate.

Dragon will also test a secondary locator system called the relative GPS system, which uses the spacecraft's position relative to the space station to establish its coordinates

the six-person crew inside the orbiting laboratory will be monitoring their new visitor

use a crew command panel onboard the station to communicate with the capsule and send it a command to turn on a strobe light.

After completing the fly-under, Dragon will loop out in front, above and then behind the space station to position itself for docking.

Step 6: Rendezvous

during Dragon's fourth day of flight, the spacecraft will fire its thrusters again to bring it within 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) of the space station

there, NASA's Mission Control team in Houston will run through a "go-no go" call to confirm all teams are ready for rendezvous

If everyone is "go," Dragon will inch closer, to about 820 feet (250 meters) away from the space station.

series of final checkouts will be performed to make sure all of Dragon's location and navigation systems are accurate

If all looks good, Dragon's SpaceX control team on the ground will command the vehicle to approach the space station

When it reaches 720 feet (220 meters), the astronauts onboard the outpost will command the capsule to halt.

After another series of "go-no go" checks

approach to 656 feet (200 meters), and then 98 feet (30 meters), and finally 32 feet (10 meters), the capture point.

Step 7: Docking

Mission Control will tell the space station crew they are "go" for capturing Dragon

astronaut Don Pettit will use the station's robotic arm to reach out and grab Dragon, pulling it in to the bottom side of the lab's Harmony node, and then attaching it.

The next day, after more checkouts, the crew will open the hatch between Dragon and the station.

Over the coming weeks, the astronauts will spend about 25 hours unpacking the 1,014 pounds (460 kilograms) of cargo that Dragon delivers

none of the cargo is critical (since this is a test flight),

capsule will arrive bearing food, water, clothing and supplies for the crew.

Step 8: Undocking

Dragon is due to spend about 18 days docked at the International Space Station.

the station astronauts will use the robotic arm to maneuver the capsule out to about 33 feet (10 meters) away, then release it. Dragon will then use its thrusters to fly a safe distance away from the laboratory.

Step 9: Re-entry

About four hours after departing the space station, Dragon will fire its engines to make what's called a de-orbit burn

will set the capsule on a course for re-entry through Earth's atmosphere

spacecraft is equipped with a heat shield to protect it from the fiery temperatures of its 7-minute re-entry flight.

Step 10: Landing

due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean to end its mission

There, recovery crews will be waiting to collect the capsule about 250 miles (450 kilometers) off the West Coast of the United States

NASA is now considering other science missions

the health of the spacecraft, but it is so far listed as good (except for the two damaged reaction wheels).

There are limiting factors

radiation can degrade components over time, and a stray micrometeorid could (as a small chance) cause damage on the spacecraft

a state where the spacecraft uses as little fuel as possible

point rest state right now

will extend the fuel “budget” for years

unable to say just how many years yet

Another concern is NASA’s limited budget

Kepler has, so far, detected more than 2,700 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, including many Earth-size planets that are within their star’s habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form

NASA made several attempts to resurrect the wheels

follow-up spacecraft planned: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which is expected to start around 2017 or 2018. It will look for alien planets in the brightest and closest stars in the entire sky, in locations that are (in relative terms) close to Earth.

required three functioning wheels to maintain the precision pointing necessary to detect the signal of small Earth-sized exoplanets

With the failure of a second reaction wheel, the spacecraft can no longer precisely point at the mission's original field of view. The culprit is none other than our own sun

pushes the spacecraft around

the pressure exerted when the photons of sunlight strike the spacecraft

Without a third wheel to help counteract the solar pressure, the spacecraft's ultra-precise pointing capability cannot be controlled in all directions.

Kepler mission and Ball Aerospace engineers have developed an innovative way of recovering pointing stability by maneuvering the spacecraft so that the solar pressure is evenly distributed across the surfaces of the spacecraft

To achieve this level of stability, the orientation of the spacecraft must be nearly parallel to its orbital path around the sun

This technique of using the sun as the 'third wheel' to control pointing is currently being tested on the spacecraft and early results are already coming i

During a pointing performance test in late October, a full frame image of the space telescope's full field of view was captured showing part of the constellation Sagittarius

Photons of light from a distant star field were collected over a 30-minute period and produced an image quality within five percent of the primary mission image quality

Additional testing is underway to demonstrate the ability to maintain this level of pointing control for days and weeks.

The K2 mission concept has been presented to NASA Headquarters

A decision to proceed to the 2014 Senior Review – a biannual assessment of operating missions – and propose for budget to fly K2 is expected by the end of 2013

For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitored the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes.

In September 2032, the European spacecraft will arrive at Ganymede, becoming the first probe to enter orbit around the moon of another planet

Equipped with radar, a mapping camera and other instruments, JUICE will measure the thickness of global ice sheets covering Jupiter's moons and produce terrain and mineral maps of Ganymede

Russia's plan is to implement a Ganymede Lander

Russian mission planners initially proposed the lander to target Europa, another of Jupiter's moons with a frozen crust thinner than the ice cap covering Ganymede

After a NASA mission to orbit Europa never materialized, Russia retooled the project to focus on Ganymede, falling in line with the goals of Europe's Jupiter mission

advantages of landing on Ganymede as opposed to Europa

The radiation environment at Ganymede is less severe than at Europa, which lies closer to Jupiter

this is one of the reasons ESA picked Ganymede as the destination for JUICE

Russian scientists say mapping and reconnaissance of Ganymede are required before any attempted landing

If Russia becomes a full partner in Europe's JUICE mission, the development of the lander will need to be accelerated to launch in 2022, if managers want the Russian craft to ride to Jupiter as a piggyback payload.

Highlights from the prime mission

confirmed the discovery of the first planetary system with more than one planet transiting the same star

the discovery of the first unquestionably rocky planet outside the solar system

1.4 times the size of Earth

confirmed the existence of a world with a double sunset

discoveries of six additional worlds orbiting double stars further demonstrated planets can form and persist in the environs of a double-star system

first planet in a habitable zone

December 2011

September 2011

February 2012

transiting planet candidates

total of 2,321

Recently

The joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double star

in, the most promising of which were presented in early February

The two scopes were originally built to carry out surveillance missions under a multibillion-dollar NRO program called Future Imagery Architecture

cost overruns and delays killed the program in 2005, and NASA announced in June 2012 that the NRO had bequeathed the instruments to the space agency

the telescopes' 8-foot-wide (2.4 meters) main mirrors are comparable to that of Hubble, the NRO instruments are designed to have a much wider field of view

Seven big ideas

Mars-orbiting space telescope

Exoplanet observatory

General-purpose faint object explorer

Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope

Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)

Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)

Research of Earth's upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)

Whatever missions NASA ultimately assigns to the NRO scopes, the instruments are a long way from launch

they're far from being fully outfitted spacecraft.

no instruments on these two telescopes — just primary and secondary mirrors and the support structures

It's going to take a while to develop the instruments and integrate them into the structure

there's no guarantee that it will be

the funding to bring the scopes up to speed, launch them into space and maintain their operations has not been granted. And

NASA announced

the international partners

one American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut

are scheduled to begin their voyage in spring 2015

“If the mission proves to be effective, we will discuss sending year-long missions to ISS on a permanent basis

ExoMars is a two-mission project that is considered as a single program at ESA

council decision removes an immediate problem for ExoMars, it does not solve the longer-term funding issue that has dogged the project for years

ESA wants to have a high-resolution imager on their 2016 mission, but the hitch is they need a commitment from NASA

ESA official said that with ExoMars now taking on more scientific instruments, many provided by Russia

(13.8 minutes) for radio signal to reach Earth from Mars

landing will be at about 3 p.m. local time at the Mars landing site.

How long does it take for the rover to get to Mars’ surface after it reaches the outer atmosphere?

How big is the parachute?

How big are the spacecraft and the rover?

How does the rover get its power for roving?

What are the science instruments on board Curiosity?

How many cameras are on Curiosity?

When did Curiosity launch?

How far is Mars away from Earth?

How fast can Curiosity rove?

Where is Curiosity’s landing site?

What will the weather be like at Gale Crater?

How many possible landing sites did scientists considered before deciding on Gale Crater?

How long is the primary mission?

How much does this mission cost?

GRAIL delivered to Earth over 99.99 percent of the data that could have been collected

extended mission goal is to take an even closer look at the moon's gravity field. To achieve this, GRAIL mission planners will halve their current operating altitude to the lowest altitude that can be safely maintained.

Orbiting at an average altitude of 14 miles (23 kilometers)

clearing some of the moon's higher surface features by about 5 miles (8 kilometers),"

To date over 70,000 student images of the moon have been obtained.

17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February

NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon

10 June

Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence

25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667

11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere

NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered

15 August

Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination

3 September

12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977

NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples

26 September

In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type

mafic

as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi

perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site

earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts

Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b

30 September

8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.

Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through

17 October

22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet

4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy

11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars

5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System

21 November

1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16

3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b

9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter

14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there

18 December

nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away

20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported

launch pad and the first commercial flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in over five years

SpaceX has nearly 50 launches on manifest, of which over 60% are for commercial customers

This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program

When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions

MAVEN arrives about 48 hours ahead of MOM on September 21, 2014.

rendezvous on September 24, 2014

MOM probe

will study the atmosphere and sniff for signals of methane.

Working together, MOM and MAVEN will revolutionize our understanding of Mars atmosphere, dramatic climatic history and potential for habitability

MOM was designed and developed by the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) at a cost of $69 Million and marks India’s maiden foray into interplanetary flight

before reaching Mars, mission navigators must keep the craft