Figure 1: Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander (bronze, top) and its rideshare payloads are shown inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing prior to launch spaceflightnow.com. AstroForge’s Brokkr‑2 spacecraft (renamed Odin, gold box at bottom center) was attached beneath Athena for this flight. Odin’s mission was to fly by a near-Earth asteroid to scout its composition, specifically to confirm…
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In the coming decade, a trio of advanced space observatories will open new windows on the universe, tackling some of the most profound mysteries in astronomy. These next-generation telescopes – NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the European Space Agency’s PLATO and ATHENA missions – are poised to revolutionize our understanding of everything from…
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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest, most powerful and most complex space telescope ever launched science.nasa.gov. A joint mission of NASA, ESA, and CSA, JWST serves as a “cosmic time machine” for modern astronomy by using infrared vision to peer back over 13.5 billion years and reveal the earliest stars and galaxies…
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