Send Your Name to Mars on NASA's next mission

NASA is taking registrations to send names to the next Mars mission. It asks for your name, country, zip code and email to register. You can sign up here.

After registering you will receive a boarding pass that you can download print or embed in your webpage like the one below.

Previously, NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover, which had landed on February 18, 2021, carried names of 10.9 million people embedded into silicon chips. (Source)

Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon

Today, August 23, 2023, ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 lunar exploration mission successfully landed on the moon at 6:04 PM IST (5:34 AM PT). The mission was launched on a Bahubali LVM3-M4 rocket carrying a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan on July 14 this year which I had logged here.

With this landing, India has become the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the moon, after the former Soviet Union, the U.S. and China. It has also become the first country to land on the lunar south pole, which is still an unexplored area.

ISRO's Tweet on the successful landing:

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
'India,
I reached my destination
and you too!'
: Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 has successfully
soft-landed on the moon 🌖!.

Congratulations, India!#Chandrayaan_3#Ch3

— ISRO (@isro) August 23, 2023

Below is the saved live stream of the landing on YouTube. The final phase of the descent starts at 35:13.

ISRO tweeted the first images received from the lander:

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
Updates:

The communication link is established between the Ch-3 Lander and MOX-ISTRAC, Bengaluru.

Here are the images from the Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera taken during the descent. #Chandrayaan_3#Ch3 pic.twitter.com/ctjpxZmbom

— ISRO (@isro) August 23, 2023

Earlier on November 10, 2009, with the Chandrayaan-1 mission, ISRO made a deliberate crash landing of its Moon Impact Probe (MIP) which helped discover water molecules on the moon.

Today I Learned: Voyager 1 is almost 15 billion miles away from Earth and still can communicate

Today I Learned: Voyager 1 space probe is almost 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth and still can communicate with the ground antennas of the Deep Space Network (DSN).

The DSN antennas are located at Goldstone, near Barstow, California; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. [Source]

Chandrayaan-3 Launched

ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 lunar exploration mission was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the Sriharikota island. The Bahubali LVM3-M4 rocket carries a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan. The lander aboard is expected to touchdown on the Moon's south pole on August 23. The Moon’s south pole is a relatively unexplored area on the lunar surface that holds immense research potential. Achieving a successful lunar landing would elevate India into the league of nations that includes the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China – becoming the fourth nation to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.

ISRO describes the details of the mission in simple terms in this brochure. The missions official home page is here [archived].

ISRO's Tweet on the successful launch:

LVM3 M4/Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
LVM3 M4 vehicle🚀 successfully launched Chandrayaan-3🛰️ into orbit.

— ISRO (@isro) July 14, 2023

Below is the saved live stream of the launch on YouTube. The lift off happens at 35:13.

Nasa successfully flies small helicopter on Mars

The drone, called Ingenuity, was airborne for less than a minute, but Nasa is celebrating what represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56799755

SpaceX launches first crew to orbit

The two astronauts — veteran NASA fliers Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — rode into space inside SpaceX’s new automated spacecraft called the Crew Dragon, a capsule designed to take people to and from the International Space Station.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/30/21269703/spacex-launch-crew-dragon-nasa-orbit-successful

Today I Learned: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have under 70 kilobytes of memory each

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Today I Learned: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes have only 69.63 kilobytes of memory each. For comparison, a mobile phone with 16 gigabytes of memory has about 240,000 times the memory of a Voyager spacecraft. Source

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mission Path

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an interesting infographic here which traces the route of its space missions.