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#1 2022-07-16 12:57:22

tahanson43206
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Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,746

Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

For SpaceNut re this topic ...

There are 13 pages of topics created by NewMars members over 20 years ...

Not ONE of all those topics was a good fit for the article/media presentation I received from a relative today.

Here is a place where members are welcome to post announcements of new probes that they might discover, if they don't want to create a new topic.

(th)

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#2 2022-07-16 12:59:01

tahanson43206
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Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,746

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

The article/media presentation at the link below seems to cover the entire field of planned or possible probes, as of mid-2022.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/07 … -for-life/

Comments  / additions are welcome.

(th)

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#3 2022-07-16 14:32:13

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,747

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Ah the question of SETI or are we alone in this huge immense universe.
JWST while it may not find it directly its showing that we may see it in time. Then we have all of the receiving units listening as well for those signs of life signals.

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#4 2022-07-26 03:20:13

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Tahanson because the region of Space and the Cosmos is almost endless and new fringe ideas is an almost infinite area of exploation I believe this topic could be broken down more and tagged and filed with categories like 'Astro-biological' or Landers or Planetary Moon Sciences.
For example 'Euclid' from ESA seems to be a great idea for an upcoming mission but it will not explore Titan or find life on Mars, SETI and even the fringe UFO-ology stuff is another interesting idea but it is not a lander.

It can become difficult to find hits in a search engine when so many discussions also have discussion of probes or so many other areas of the internet have chat about possible alien life.

JWST is unique in that it is an IR space telescope that can be used to look back into the distant past, the Webb telescope can give us even more info than Hubble and Webb can also look into our own Solar system and explore it.

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#5 2022-09-24 13:16:42

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

I don't think that Enceladus mission mentioned in the news article is happening...not yet anyways

Here are a few interesting ideas I have seen in other threads when using the search button this week.
Many ideas from many different peoples
and from Russia it once had in 2003, Venera-D was proposed and many ideas but now almost nothing, mostly blood and time and money put into invasion and war, maybe an orbiter and a lander to be launched in 2279 by a Russian but will Russia even exist anymore? Other nations have many interesting planned ideas coming for unmanned exploration.

1
The new Lunar vehicle I have seen discussion on a unmanned or maybe manned vehicle for the Moon, it might be a construction digger or Car, GM has designs, Toyota is studying ideas, the S.Koreans are interested, this will have implications for Mars exploration.
Perhaps a Slightly off-topic Car industry, Trains, Boats, Tesla discussion
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9685
2
China's upcoming MSR mission which might get to Mars and comeback before NASA / ESA I believe the Chinese mission is referred to in news media as 'Tianwen-3'. The NASA MSR is close to the Chinese mission but it looks like China will get there firest on the current timeline and NASA due to return after.
3
Europa Orbiter or Lander, both studied by NASA and ESA already mentioned in other topics and in news article posted in this thread.
There was a cancelled mission JIMO during the Bush vision years then Europa Clipper became the main NASA mission to Europa and Juice became the ESA version.
Europa discussion
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1509
4
Return to Titan, there was an idea for a Balloon but it seems it will be 'Dragonfly' a planned spacecraft and NASA mission, which will send a robotic rotorcraft. Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn is also an interesting place, maybe the Orbiter could also look there.
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9076
5
Exploration of planets Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter fly by and other orbiters lots of speculation, JAXA mission OKEANOS, a mission to Jupiter and Trojan asteroids,  trans-Neptunian dwarf planet exploration, members of the inner Oort cloud, 'Interstellar Heliosphere Probe' possibly Nuclear some proposed ideas by NASA and China.
6
Comet on the Surface or land on an Asteroid, there are ideas for Comet interceptors by Japan and NASA, there are many interesting ideas but they currently seem to be mostly proposals. Lucy and  Psyche Asteroid or Comet missions, Lucy a NASA space probe on a twelve-year journey to eight different asteroids, visiting a main belt asteroid as well as seven Jupiter trojans. There is also 'DART' testing a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects
7
Testing a Gravity Wheel or Artificial Gravity in space with mice or insects, this might not be a robot lander and might not be of interest to all other who like robots but it is of interest to me and others, a question I would like answered.
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=10339
8
Mercury, Venus exploration, some currently en route like the BepiColombo mission, India's mission ideas the ISRO Shukrayaan-1 there are also NASA's VICI's proposed payloads to Venus. Studying our own Star the Sun is probably even more important than Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes to Inner Planets.

9
OSIRIS-REx NASA goes to a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, and return the sample to Earth. I believe China has an asteroid-sampling mission planned and Japan might also return samples from one of the Moons of Mars.
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8489

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-24 13:40:37)

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#6 2022-10-03 22:27:36

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

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#7 2023-03-22 08:37:30

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

A helicopter is going to Titan. Could an airplane be next?
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-helicopte … plane.html

Tianwen-2: China’s Near-Earth asteroid and comet double-header
https://www.planetary.org/articles/tian … ble-header

‘Space Juice’ mocktail to be served at ESA’s Jupiter spacecraft launch party
https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/space-j … 66447.html

Japan aims to bring back soil samples from Mars moon by 2029
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14421867

VERITAS

The Spacecraft for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy an upcoming mission from NASA 's JPL designers.

NASA’s “Return To Venus” Mission May Have Just Become Collateral Damage
https://www.iflscience.com/nasas-return … mage-68055
The VERITAS mission has been delayed and likely won't launch until the 2030s.

It was a dramatic week for Venus last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in Texas. It was revealed that there are likely still active volcanos on Venus, which got people really excited about NASA's imminent return to Earth’s hellish twin. But then it turned out that almost all the funding for its VERITAS mission had been pulled, resulting in the delay of said return to Venus. 

Back in 2021, NASA announced two Discovery missions would return to Venus: DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging - the plus was dropped last year), a probe that will plunge through the planet's dense atmosphere collecting detailed measurements, and VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy), to investigate if Venus has or had plate tectonics and establish if there are still active volcanos on Venus. Launch dates were estimated for 2028-2030 with budgets of $500 million each (not huge as missions go).

However, amid a report on why the Psyche mission missed its 2022 launch, which detailed significant issues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where VERITAS was being prepared, it was announced last November the VERITAS mission was to be postponed.

The report highlighted deep concerns about the management of the Psyche mission as well as issues of high stress, understaffing, inadequate scheduling, and a deficit of communication within the wider JPL. Psyche was postponed to October this year and VERITAS got a three-year pushback, so it will launch no earlier than 2031. 

However, based on reports from the conference last week that the only budget currently available for the VERITAS mission is the $1.5 million budget for the science, it doesn't look like the mission is going ahead any time soon. IFLScience has reached out to NASA and the VERITAS team for comment on the status of the mission but has not yet received a reply.

“The VERITAS delay is beyond disappointing. We were hoping to have VERITAS at Venus late this decade, returning data that would be used to calibrate measurements by ESA's EnVision mission, due to fly to Venus in the early 2030s,” Assistant Professor Paul Byrne, from Washington University in St. Louis, told IFLScience.

“We were looking forward to getting stuck into the so-called "Decade of Venus" in the late 2020s, but now we're going to have to wait a minimum of three years more—bearing in mind that the last US mission to Venus ended in 1994.”

This is a frustrating development for scientists who want to understand Venus as an active planet better. The last two spacecraft to successfully orbit Venus, the European Venus Express and the Japanese Akatsuki, both focused on the orbital analysis of the atmosphere. NASA's DAVINCI, which is also set to study Venu's atmosphere, is currently on schedule to launch at the end of the decade. But we'll have to wait a little longer for Venus geology. 

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-03-22 08:43:26)

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#8 2023-03-25 13:37:28

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

The hard truths of NASA’s planetary program
https://thespacereview.com/article/4552/1

“There is a large imbalance today between the workload and the available resources at JPL,” Young said last fall.

..'mission that was on track is being effectively martyred for all those missions that are going over budget,”'

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#9 2023-03-25 14:36:41

Mars_B4_Moon
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Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

'The DragonflyMission is one step closer to exploring Saturn’s moon, Titan, after sharing spacecraft design, mission requirements, and science plans with a panel of external experts.'

https://twitter.com/nasasolarsystem/sta … 0058605569

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#10 2023-03-25 16:58:17

GW Johnson
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From: McGregor, Texas USA
Registered: 2011-12-04
Posts: 5,423
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Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

JPL was the one part of NASA not so badly infected with management focused solely on schedule and budget.  That's why the JPL probes have a far better track record than NASA as a whole. 

However,  if that changed,  and the posts indicate that it might have,  then JPL's track record will fall to that of NASA-as-a-whole.  The same NASA that gave you Apollo-1,  Challenger,  and Columbia.  Any time budgets and schedules dominate,  fatal failures are what you get. 

GW


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#11 2023-03-26 06:29:08

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Europa Clipper: A guide to NASA's new astrobiology mission

https://www.space.com/europa-clipper-mission-explained


ESAJuice and Aariane5 are almost ready to meet
https://twitter.com/ESA_JUICE/status/16 … 5577667584
Here, engineers attach the spacecraft to the golden cylinder that will connect it to the rocket.

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#12 2023-03-30 06:37:10

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

NASA releases draft strategy for long-term robotic Mars exploration

https://spacenews.com/nasa-releases-dra … ploration/

NASA has unveiled a draft strategy for long-term robotic exploration of Mars that emphasizes low-cost missions and potential commercial partnerships.

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#13 2023-04-28 04:10:42

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

ZHANG Rongqiao, chief designer of Tianwen-1 says the prototyping of Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission has been completed and the work to build launch ready hardware will start in mid 2023, currently targeting May of 2025 for launch
https://twitter.com/cnspaceflight/statu … 1950072834

Explore or Orbit or Sample return on a near-Earth asteroid

Carrying a wide/narrow angle multispectral and color cameras, a thermal emission spectrometer, a visible/near-infrared imaging spectrometer, a mass spectrometer, a magnetometer, and a charged/neutral particle and dust analyzer.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190418173 … 988625.htm

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#14 2023-04-28 08:15:47

Mars_B4_Moon
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Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Icy moonquakes: a new NASA study suggests that surface shaking on Jupiter's moon Europa could trigger landslides that would explain parts of the icy world's enigmatic landscapes. Our mission will provide extreme closeups of the surface.
https://twitter.com/EuropaClipper/statu … 4681702400


RIME, the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration, is an ice-penetrating radar to study the subsurface structure of the icy moons down to a depth of around nine kilometres.


Work continues to deploy Juice RIME antenna

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration … ME_antenna



Juice’s ice-penetrating RIME antenna has not yet been deployed as planned. During the first week of commissioning, an issue arose with the 16-metre-long Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna, which is preventing it from being released from its mounting bracket.

Work continues to free the radar and teams at ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, along with partners in science and industry, have lots of ideas up their sleeves.


Every day the RIME antenna shows more signs of movement, visible in images from the Juice Monitoring Camera on board the spacecraft with a partial view of the radar and its mount. Now partially extended but still stowed away, the radar is roughly a third of its full intended length.

The current leading hypothesis is that a tiny stuck pin has not yet made way for the antenna’s release. In this case, it is thought that just a matter of millimetres could make the difference to set the rest of the radar free.

Various options are still available to nudge the important instrument out of its current position. The next steps to fully deploy the antenna include an engine burn to shake the spacecraft a little followed by a series of rotations that will turn Juice, warming up the mount and radar, which are currently in the cold shadows.

Juice is otherwise performing excellently after the successful deployment and operation of its mission-critical solar arrays and medium gain antenna, as well as its 10.6-m magnetometer boom.

The RIME instrument is an ice-penetrating radar designed to study the surface and subsurface structure of Jupiter’s icy moons down to a depth of 9 km.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-04-28 08:19:54)

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#15 2023-05-08 09:07:31

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

A proposed cut of nearly 20% in the 2024 budget for NASA’s Dragonfly mission

https://spacenews.com/dragonfly-mission … udget-cut/

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#16 2023-05-12 10:52:39

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Rumors about ESA Juice

We're now hearing from ESA's Official Source that the Antenna has been 'DEPLOYED SUCCESSFULLY'!
https://twitter.com/SpaceVoyaging/statu … 4560165888


more water worlds

Exciting to see additional members of the ocean world family...

https://twitter.com/EuropaClipper/statu … 1377145856

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#17 2023-06-16 03:54:18

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

BepiColombo braces for third Mercury flyby

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Bepi … y_999.html

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#18 2023-08-04 17:15:18

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Some news continues to come out about USA/NASA/ESA mission for a Mars Sample Return and China's future Mars Sample Return Plans
ESA's JUICE and NASA Clipper will work together at the Jupiter Moon system.

The Chinese Moon robot.

China's Chang'e-7 will deploy a hopper that jumps into a crater in search of water ice
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-china-cha … rater.html


What if your Spacecraft is not a Spider and not a Rover?

If you send a 'Humanoid' Robot to probe and explore would it class as a 'Probe' or be more similar to human exploration?

NASA humanoid robot to do dirty work in Australia before it helps astronauts in space
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92269/na … index.html

New nations and groups exploring seem to be less easy to predict, South Korea is currently at the Moon and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans many Moon missions, the Commercial Space Sector has many ideas.

There are also a number of Probes and Spacecraft that could double as proposed space observatories, some are not approved and mostly Design Study.

New Frontiers

Io Observer?

and a picture of the Titan 'Dragonfly'
https://newfrontiers.larc.nasa.gov/NF5/

Dragonfly
https://www.nasa.gov/planetarymissions/ … tiers.html
Launch date: 2026


From the Japanese

SLIM the a lunar lander being developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon

a previous mission OMOTENASHI seems to have failed, a small spacecraft and semi-hard lander of the 6U CubeSat format intended to demonstrate low-cost technology, the mission was to be launched as a secondary payload on Space Launch System (SLS) Artemis 1 mission. JAXA announced that attempts to communicate with the spacecraft have ceased, due to the solar cells failing to generate power because of them facing away from the Sun.
http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXLASDG2 … 0C1CR0000/

Japan's SLIM is to be launched together with the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) space telescope, and is to land near the Marius Hills Hole, https://web.archive.org/web/20160102071 … on/P54.pdf  a lunar lava tube entrance discovered by Kaguya, cost for developing this project is 18 billion yen.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-04 17:43:50)

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#19 2023-08-05 05:07:13

Mars_B4_Moon
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Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

This could go in one of those NASA Budget economics threads

Janus mission was part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, which capped mission budgets at around $55 million and spacecraft sizes at 180 kilograms.

NASA canceled the Janus mission entirely citing a lack of suitable scientific targets following a change in launch schedule, and a lack of funding for planetary science

https://blogs.nasa.gov/janus/2023/07/11 … d-systems/

SIMPLEx mission investigations are managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Discovery Program at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington.

The University of Colorado Boulder was leading the Janus science team
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021p … S/abstract
it was a Low-cost and series of small craft are being designed and built by Lockheed Martin. Each spacecraft would have been carrying two science instruments, a visible and an IR imager, built by Malin Space Science Systems

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#20 2023-08-09 09:03:43

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is set for liftoff on August 26, co-riding with the country’s X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM).
https://www.leonarddavid.com/japans-sli … n-smartly/
An H-IIA launch vehicle carrying the payloads will depart the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Tanegashima Space Center.

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#21 2023-08-20 06:15:37

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

They confirm the loss of spacecraft but Do they know where it crashed?

Russia's Luna-25 probe crashes on the Moon: Roscosmos
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Russ … s_999.html

Luna-Glob aka Luna25 mission ends with a crash into the lunar surface, Roskosmos confirms. The conclusion is made after unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the spacecraft
https://twitter.com/RussianSpaceWeb/sta … 7003242681

The Russian space agency says its Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the moon.
https://www.aol.com/news/russian-space- … 42681.html

Russia’s unmanned robot lander crashed

'Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years smashes into the moon'

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/russi … 5dy0v.html

Plans for what became Luna 25 began in the late 1990s after the fall of the USSR.

India might soon be on the Moon, a Swedish payload decided to pick China instead, then ESA cancelled their scientific camera due to continued international collaboration having been thrown into doubt by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and related sanctions on Russia.

This might set their program backwards, going back a few years ago they also talked of 'Russian Manned Moon Architecture'

Russian space agency Roscosmos says the lander no longer exists

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-20 08:32:46)

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#22 2023-08-23 11:15:16

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

'We have got a picture map from LRO images! Chandrayaan3 Landing location might in the vicinity of this region'

https://twitter.com/Ramanean/status/1694348494738465048

'ROVER GETTING DEPLOYED'

https://twitter.com/rocketgyan/status/1 … 3895972327

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#23 2023-08-25 03:58:12

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Profound lessons to be learned from modern-day lunar missions

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Prof … s_999.html

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#24 2023-09-16 07:23:55

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

Japan Slim,

tracked and communicated perfectly by the Tracking Network Technology Center.

https://twitter.com/SLIM_JAXA/status/17 … 2695346504

Other missions the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) Phobos Sample Return Mission,  the International-Mars Ice Mapper (I-MIM) mission a proposed Mars orbiter being developed by NASA in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency,   Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Tera-hertz Explorer (TEREX) mission a planned orbiter and lander that will be carrying a terahertz sensor to the surface of Mars to measure the oxygen isotope ratios of various molecules in the Martian atmosphere

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-09-16 07:28:31)

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#25 2023-10-07 06:07:01

Mars_B4_Moon
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Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,892

Re: Overview of Planned or Possible Unmanned Probes

photo of the moon at a distance of 7000km

https://twitter.com/SLIM_JAXA/status/17 … 1179886020

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