Weekly - Chandrayaan-3 enters lunar orbit and more
Weekly Space News - Quick and Easy
Astronomers spot a planet having its atmosphere ripped off
Last week astronomers spotted a new and unique exoplanet called ‘AU Microscopii b’ located 32 lightyears from Earth. The new exoplanet is Neptune-sized, but what makes it truly unique is the fact that it orbits its dwarf star (AU Microscopii) so closely that its atmosphere is being ripped off.
NASA reestablishes contact with Voyager 2
Voyager 2 is the 2nd farthest spacecraft from Earth. Launched in 1977 this spacecraft has traveled well past the solar system and is now at a distance of more than 19.9 billion kilometers from the earth. Surprisingly, despite the massive distance from it to the Earth, it had still been transmitting data toward the Earth. This was until a few days ago when the signals suddenly stopped. This was caused by a series of planned commands sent to the spacecraft. An accidental bug in the commands had caused the antenna of the craft to turn away from the earth. Fortunately, last week scientists used the Deep Space Network (a global network of observatories) to send an extremely powerful signal to the spacecraft which in turn helped it correct the antenna’s orientation
Chandrayaan enters lunar orbit
ISRO’s moon mission ‘Chandrayaan-3’ was put into the moon’s orbit last week. This is a major phase in the life of the mission before it lands on the moon. The craft will now complete 5-6 orbits (each one closer to the moon) over the next few days and will land on the moon on August-23.
Russia gears up to launch its 7th moon lander
Russia is gearing up to launch its latest lunar lander to the moon. The lander called Luna-25 is Russia’s 7th lunar lander. The mission is to be launched on 11 August and will land near the south pole of the moon (same as Chandrayaan-3). The mission however does not contain a rover and is mainly comprised of a lunar lander.
