Page 5 - Ezzy Pearson News Today

A guide to November 2021’s night sky in the northern hemisphere.

We take a look back at ESAs Rosetta mission to study Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

A guide to September 2021’s night sky. This month: Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, asteroids Pallas, as well as the last chance to see Spica this year.

Who owns the Moon? Historically, lawless colonisation of a new land has rarely ended well. While there are no indigenous peoples or environments that can be harmed on the Moon, the current state of space law could be setting up future lunar colonists for disaster. Advertisement Today, the only international law governing space stems from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that’s overseen by the United Nations. This states that no government can lay claim to the Moon, but failed to foresee that priva...

This competition is now closed How humanity will return to the Moon: The future of lunar exploration For almost 40 years, our nearest cosmic neighbour, the Moon, was left alone as we looked elsewhere in the Solar System. That changed in 2013, when China’s Chang’e 3 lander touched down on the lunar surface. Since then there’s been an explosion of interest in the Moon. NASA, China and even private companies are racing back to it, with dozens of robotic and human missions being planned. Thin...

Ingenuity has successfully taken off and re-landed on the surface of Mars. Advertisement “We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” says MiMi Aung, Ingenuity’s project manager. The spacecraft – a drone-like probe which travelled to Mars alongside NASA’s Perseverance rover – rose just over 3m from the planet’s surface, hovered for around 30s before landing. Artist’s impression of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying through Martian sky. Cr...