

Space
Mars exploration in focus as Europe prepares ExoMars Rover for search of life
2020 may be the year humanity takes its biggest step toward finding evidence of life beyond Earth. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are each working on its own rover that will roam Mars’s surface in search of life.
The ExoMars mission is Europe’s first Mars rover. Named after British DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, the golf cart-sized robot is approximately one-third the size of NASA’s planned Mars 2020 rover and will look for signs that life might have existed on Mars.
Both rovers will act as remote scientists, beaming back a wealth of data and images to Earth.
Mars 2020 will collect Martian samples for eventual return to Earth sometime in the future, while ExoMars will use its unique drill to burrow below the surface. Here, the rover will find pristine samples that were shielded from the harsh radiation bombarding Mars’s surface. Scientists are hopeful that below the surface is where we could find our first evidence of life.
A Rover’s Purpose
Mars is a hostile place. Because its atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, life as we know it would have a difficult time surviving on the surface.
Billions of years ago, the surface of Mars was probably quite similar to that of Earth. However, that changed when Mars lost its magnetic field, which stripped its atmosphere, and exposed its surface to intense radiation. All of which made survival above ground incredibly challenging.
Historically, Mars missions have searched for signs of life on the planet’s surface, usually at places where there are signs of ancient water. That’s because this is typically where we find life on Earth.
But since we haven’t found life on the planet’s surface yet, mission scientists propose we need to dig deeper. There may be some microbial Martians underground.
The ExoMars rover (and accompanying lander) are a follow-on to ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter mission which reached Mars in 2016. That initial mission consisted of two parts: the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli landing demonstrator.
Landing on Mars
TGO made it to Mars and is doing great, however, Schiaparelli didn’t fare so well — the lander crashed during its descent to the Martian surface.
Landing a probe on Mars is not easy. To safely navigate the tenuous Martian atmosphere requires a combination of sophisticated landing gear, including heat shields, retrorockets, and even giant, inflatable airbags.
Despite the crash landing, Schiaparelli achieved its goal as a technology demonstrator. It also showed that the team needed to revamp the landing system before the rover launches. But, with less than a year till liftoff, the rover team is struggling with an established piece of landing architecture: parachutes.
In order to slow the rover down, the mission requires multiple parachutes — one 15 meters (49 feet) in diameter and one 35 meters (115 feet).
As the rover begins its descent, atmospheric drag will slow the craft from around 21 000 km/h (13,048 mph) to 1700 km/h (1,056 mph). That’s when the first parachute will deploy. About 20 seconds later, at about 400 km/h (248 mph), the second chute will deploy. Lastly, the braking engines will kick in about 1 km (or half a mile) above the ground, enabling the rover land safely on the Martian surface.
The entire sequence takes just six minutes.
Parachute Troubles
During high-altitude testing conducted earlier this year, the craft’s parachutes ripped as soon as they deployed. ESA engineers made several adjustments, including reinforcing both the parachutes and their storage bags with Teflon to make them deploy easier. The chutes are still tearing.
Now the agency is turning to NASA for help. ESA engineers are teaming up with the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to put the enhanced parachutes through months of rigorous testing.
In the meantime, the rover team is putting its hardware through a round of thermal testing. For 18 days it will be subjected to the same harsh temperature conditions experienced on Mars.
The parachutes are expected to finish testing sometime in April 2020; they will then be integrated with the rover and shipped to the launch site in Kazakhstan. However, if any part of the mission misses its deadline, the entire project could be sidelined until the next favorable Mars launch window — in 2022.
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News
SpaceX rescue mission for stranded ISS astronauts nears end — Here’s when they’ll return home

SpaceX is ready to bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the two astronauts that have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months.
Last week, SpaceX launched its Crew-10 mission, which would dock onto the ISS late Saturday night and be the two astronauts’ ride home. Now, the end is in sight, and it appears both NASA and SpaceX are planning to have the two home this week, perhaps earlier than expected.
SpaceX readies to rescue astronauts from International Space Station
The agency and the company have announced that Dragon will autonomously undock from the ISS on Tuesday at 1:05 a.m. ET and should re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splashdown off the Florida coast about 17 hours later.
SpaceX said:
“SpaceX and NASA are targeting Tuesday, March 18 at 1:05 a.m. ET for Dragon to autonomously undock from the International Space Station. After performing a series of departure burns to move away from the space station, Dragon will conduct multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, jettison the trunk, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere for splashdown off the coast of Florida approximately 17 hours later the same day.”
Crew-9 astronaut Nick Hague will be alongside Williams and Wilmore on the flight home, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Hague and Gorbunov have been in space since Saturday, September 28.
SpaceX was tasked with bringing Wilmore and Williams home after the Boeing Starliner that sent them there was determined not to be suitable for their return.
A report from the New York Post in late August said that Boeing employees routinely made fun of SpaceX workers, only for the company to bail them out:
SpaceX bails out Boeing and employees are reportedly ‘humiliated’
Crew-10 will bring the astronauts home, ending an extensive and unscheduled stay in space.
News
SpaceX readies to rescue astronauts from International Space Station

SpaceX is readying to launch the Crew-10 mission this evening, which will bring home U.S. astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck on the International Space Station for nine months.
SpaceX is working alongside NASA to bring the two astronauts home, and all systems and weather conditions are looking ideal to launch the mission this evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
All systems are looking good and weather is exceptional for tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of @NASA‘s Crew-10 to the @Space_Station → https://t.co/VPdhVwQFNJ pic.twitter.com/wZ9LvZAnYn
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2025
Boeing was originally tasked with the rescue mission.
The company sent a Starliner aircraft to the ISS in late September in an effort to bring Williams and Wilmore home. However, malfunctioning thrusters and other issues on the Starliner aircraft prevented NASA from giving the green light to the astronauts to board and come home.
SpaceX was then tasked with bringing the two home, and it appears they will be on their way shortly.
The launch was intended to occur on Wednesday, but a last-minute problem with the rocket’s ground systems forced SpaceX and NASA to delay until at least Friday. Things are looking more ideal for a launch this evening.
The launch is targeted for 7:03 p.m. ET, but another backup opportunity is available tomorrow, March 15, at 6:41 p.m.
SpaceX writes about the Dragon spacecraft that will be used for the mission:
“The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew NASA’s Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 missions to and from the space station. This will be the second flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched the SES 03b mPOWER-e mission. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.”
The mission will not only aim to bring the two astronauts who have been stranded for nine months home, but it will also conduct new research to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.
If Crew-10 launches at the planned time this evening, it will dock to the ISS at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night.
News
SpaceX explains reasoning for Starship 7 upper stage loss

SpaceX is set to launch its eighth test flight of the Starship rocket this Friday. Ahead of the most recent test in what could be the most revolutionary spaceflight program since NASA’s Apollo, SpaceX is clearing the air about what went wrong during its previous test flight, which resulted in the loss of the second stage during its ascension.
On January 16, SpaceX successfully launched Starship while also completing its second successful catch of the lower-stage booster.
However, the flight did not go as smoothly as initially anticipated, as the company lost Starship’s upper stage roughly eight minutes and twenty seconds into flight.
Now, the company is clarifying what happened that led to the demise of the upper stage, which SpaceX has identified with the recognition of “flashes” that occurred after vehicle separation.
SpaceX completes second catch of lower stage, but loses Starship
SpaceX says that a flash was observed roughly two minutes into its burn after vehicle separation. The flash, along with sensors that was a pressure rise in the attic, indicated a leak:
“Approximately two minutes into its burn, a flash was observed in the aft section of the vehicle near one of the Raptor vacuum engines. This aft section, commonly referred to as the attic, is an unpressurized area between the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank and the aft heatshield. Sensors in the attic detected a pressure rise indicative of a leak after the flash was seen.”
This was not the only flash that was observed. Two minutes after the first, another flash was seen, but this one was followed by sustained fires in the attic. These fires caused Starship’s engines to perform a controlled shutdown:
“These eventually caused all but one of Starship’s engines to execute controlled shut down sequences and ultimately led to a loss of communication with the ship. Telemetry from the vehicle was last received just over eight minutes and 20 seconds into flight.”
SpaceX clarified that Starship was destroyed and communication with the ship was lost before it was able to initiate any destruct rules for its Autonomous Flight Safety System. The company said this was “fully healthy when communication was lost.”
It went on to say that the “most probable root cause” of the loss was likely due to an environment not seen during testing:
“The most probable root cause for the loss of ship was identified as a harmonic response several times stronger in flight than had been seen during testing, which led to increased stress on hardware in the propulsion system. The subsequent propellant leaks exceeded the venting capability of the ship’s attic area and resulted in sustained fires.”
Nevertheless, Starship will launch for the eighth time soon, with CEO Elon Musk noting that the most likely date will be Friday. This could be the second of potentially 25 Starship launches planned for 2025.
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