The following major breakthroughs in space exploration going on now
- The nation of Turkey unveiling its space program with a mission to the moon
- The UAE Mars mission, named the Hope probe, reaching the red planet yesterday
- NASA has selected SpaceX to deliver the first two segments of the moon-orbiting Gateway space station SpaceX
- China’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, arriving and orbiting around the Planet today (Feb. 10)
Coincidentally, on this day in history, Feb. 10, 1958: Radar bounced off Venus by MIT
The following written content from Space
On Feb. 10, 1958, scientists at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory bounced radar waves off of Venus. At the time, Venus was at a point in its orbit called inferior conjunction, where it is directly in between the Earth and the sun.
Scientists beamed a radar signal toward Venus, which was about 28 million miles away at the time. It took about 5 minutes for the signal to bounce off of Venus and return to Earth.
This was slightly shorter than they anticipated, which means that Venus was actually closer to Earth than scientists believed at the time.
Discover the story of how and why NASA was created, its greatest triumphs, darkest days, and of the times it exceeded all possible hopes.
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Mars two moons shine over Dubai
The two moons of Mars were projected above the skies of Dubai to celebrate the first Emirati mission to the Red Planet.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) did the campaign, hoping it would go viral, to generate excitement about the Hope mission to investigate the mysterious atmosphere of Mars. Hope arrived in orbit around Mars Tuesday (Feb. 9).
Images of the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos were projected just hours before the Hope probe began a 27-minute Mars orbit-insertion maneuver to reach its planetary destination.
“To celebrate this historic achievement, and the great work of the Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Centre, Dubai has been treated to the spectacle of a ‘double moon’ — replicating what can be seen from the surface of Mars — beamed across the UAE desert skies,” the government said in a statement.
Footage released to the media shows the campaign being set up in the desert. How the projection was accomplished isn’t clear in the video, but you can see an image of the Martian moons being suspended on cranes, along with nearby lights that presumably were involved in beaming the image into the sky. Read more from Space
