"Heavy Metal! I found an iron meteorite on Mars" tweet from Curiosity

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"Heavy Metal! I found an iron meteorite on Mars," Curiosity's handlers wrote on the mission's Twitter page.

Actually, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has discovered its first meteorite on the Red Planet, and it's no puny space rock.The new found Mars meteorite, which scientist have named "Lebanon," is nearly 2 meters wide and made of iron. Photos of the meteorite taken by Curiosity also revealed a smaller companion nearby, which is now dubbed "Lebanon B." "That 'Lebanon' is huge, almost 2 meters," said Guy Webster from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. 

While NASA released a detailed photo of the Lebanon meteorites Tuesday, July 15th, the Curiosity rover actually discovered the space rocks on May 25th. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Webster said Curiosity also found a third meteorite at the same time it spotted the Lebanon rocks. In a raw, unprocessed photo from Curiosity, the third meteorite, which is also about 2 meters wide, can be seen just beyond the closer Lebanon meteorites. Curiosity snapped detailed photos of the main Lebanon meteorite using its high-resolution Chem-Cam and Remote Micro-Imager cameras. The images revealed strange angular cavities in the surface of the rock.

Altogether, the three meteorites are the first space rocks on Mars discovered by the Curiosity rover since it landed on the Red Planet in August 2012, Webster added.

"One possible explanation is that they resulted from preferential erosion along crystalline boundaries within the metal of the rock," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Another possibility is that these cavities once contained olivine crystals, which can be found in a rare type of stony-iron meteorites called pallasites, thought to have been formed near the core-mantle boundary within an asteroid."

On Aug. 5th, Curiosity will celebrate its second Earth-year anniversary on Mars. Since landing in 2012, the rover has found evidence that Mars could have been habitable for primitive life, a major mission goal, and has been making its way toward the huge Mount Sharp, which rises from the center of its Gale Crater landing site.

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Russia Loses Control of Orbiting Experiment Module

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Russia’s Roscosmos space agency on July 24 said it had lost control of the Photon-M4 unmanned life- and materials-sciences experiment module launched July 19 but that the 6,840-kilogram module appeared otherwise to be operating normally.

Credit image: Roscosmos

Roscosmos said Photon-M4 was designed to operate autonomously for extended periods and that, for the moment, the many on-board experiments are continuing to function as designed.

Photon-M4, launched aboard a Soyuz rocket from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, is in a 575-kilometer circular orbit inclined at 64.9 degrees relative to the equator. The latest in a series of Bion and Photon capsules, Photon-M4 is designed to operate for about two months before separating from its service module and reentering the atmosphere to be retrieved for experiment analysis.

Roscosmos said ground operators lost control of Photon-M4 after only a few orbits. Their primary objective now, the agency said, is to restore command-and-control links with the spacecraft.

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NASA's project called SLS the biggest space rocket could be over

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Today, Federal auditors annouced that NASA doesn’t have enough money to get its new, $12 billion rocket system off the ground by the end of 2017 as planned. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report put the current shortfall at $400 million, but it did say that NASA is “making solid progress” on the rocket program design.

The GAO issued a report yesterday saying NASA’s Space Launch System is at high risk of missing its planned December 2017 initial test flight. The post-space-shuttle program would build the biggest rockets ever, larger than the Saturn V rockets that sent men to the moon, to send astronauts to asteroids and Mars.

“They can’t meet the date with the money they have,” report author Cristina Chaplain said. She said it isn’t because the space agency has technical problems with the congressionally required program, but that NASA didn’t get enough money to carry out the massive undertaking.

NASA’s launch-system officials told the GAO that there is a 90 percent chance they won’t be ready for the launch date.

This usually means that NASA has to delay its test-launch date, get more money or be less ambitious about what it plans to do, said former NASA associate administrator Scott Pace, space-policy director at George Washington University.

NASA is still working on the problems the GAO highlighted, but delaying the launch or diverting money from other programs would harm taxpayers, NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier wrote in the agency’s response.

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Successful liftoff of the Progress 56 cargo and docking to ISS soon

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last night, the ISS Progress 56 has lifted off (3:44 a.m. local time on July 24 in Baikonur), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft is loaded with about 2600 kg of food, fuel and supplies for the six-person Expedition 40 crew in ISS.

Credit image: Roscosmos

Astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo of the International Space Station orbiting Earth saying, "We have an open parking spot up here. First come first served! Progress launches tonight." 

Credit image: Reid Wiseman

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Tonight Progress 56 cargo will takeoff from Baikonur to ISS

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Yesterday, the International Space Station (ISS) Progress 56 cargo craft rolled out on a railcar to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for final preparations for liftoff. The Progress, loaded with about 2600 kg of food, fuel and supplies for the six-person Expedition 40 crew, will launch Today at 5:44 p.m. EDT (3:44 a.m. Thursday, Baikonur time) on a 4 orbit, and 6 hours fast track rendezvous to dock with the station’s Pirs docking compartment at 11:30 p.m.

Credit image: Roscosmos

Pirs was vacated late Monday with the undocking of the ISS Progress 55 cargo craft, which separated from the station at 5:44 p.m. Progress 55 is now a safe distance from the complex for a series of engineering tests prior to being sent to a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean on July 31st.

At Kourou, French Guiana, technicians are completing tests on the attitude control system in the third stage of the Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket that will launch the European Space Agency’s fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5). Arianespace and ESA are working toward establishing a firm launch date, with launch likely to take place early next week. The ATV-5, named the “Georges Lemaitre” in honor of the Belgian physicist and astronomer, is slated to dock to Zvezda on August 12th. 

Live NASA Television coverage of the Progress launch begins at 5:30 p.m. and returns at 11 p.m. for docking coverage. 

You could follow the live video here on SpaceTravelfoundation's blog

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