President Trump set the U.S. on a path to sending astronauts back to the lunar surface during his first term. Lately he has expressed more interest in Mars.
It’s been 47 years since the twin Voyager spacecraft started their historic mission. Having travelled through interstellar space, farther from Earth than any other human-made objects, their nuclear batteries are depleting — but NASA is taking measures to squeeze as much life out of the aging probes as possible.
Voyager 1 — launched in 1977 and now over 15.6 billion miles from Earth — started out with 10 science instruments, but now has just three running after NASA turned off another gadget to conserve its finite nuclear fuel supply. And later this month, the space agency's engineers will turn off another instrument on its exploration sibling, Voyager 2.
“On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,” Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, said in a statement. “Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon.”
Now, Mars. Photographs from the NASA Archive, a stunning new release from publisher Taschen, invites us on an extraordinary visual journey through six decades of NASA’s pioneering missions, showcasing the planet’s breathtaking landscapes, its geological wonders, and the relentless search for signs of life.