{"id":553274,"date":"2026-07-31T16:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/553274\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T16:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T16:02:15","slug":"little-moons-megarocket-tiny-cubesat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/553274\/","title":{"rendered":"Little moons, megarocket, tiny CubeSat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/email-tps-logo-small.png\" alt=\"Planetary Society logo bullet\" class=\"inline align-middle h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p>This tiny CubeSat will be a big achievement. A team of students at the University of Maryland is building their own spacecraft to join the missions observing asteroid Apophis as it passes close to Earth on April 13, 2029. Members of the team joined <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetary.org\/planetary-radio\/2026-terp-raptor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this week\u2019s Planetary Radio<\/a> to talk about how a class project turned into a real mission. Pictured: A rendering of the TERP RAPTOR CubeSat spacecraft. Image credit: TERP RAPTOR\/University of Maryland.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/email-tps-logo-small.png\" alt=\"Planetary Society logo bullet\" class=\"inline align-middle h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p>NASA may send an engineering test of the Perseverance rover to the Moon, but at what price? Planetary Society Chief of Space Policy Casey Dreier has analyzed historical analogs, public data, and current NASA procedural requirements to determine <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetary.org\/articles\/the-cost-of-a-promise-lunar-rover\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">just what the mission would cost<\/a>, and what it might deliver.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/email-tps-logo-small.png\" alt=\"Planetary Society logo bullet\" class=\"inline align-middle h-5 w-5 float-left mr-1 mt-1\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Next in the Book Club: \u201cAlien Oceans.\u201d On Aug. 5, JPL researcher and explorer Kevin Hand will join Planetary Society members in a <a href=\"https:\/\/community.planetary.org\/events\/copy-book-club-livestream-alien-oceans-by-kevin-peter-hand\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">virtual book club meeting<\/a> to discuss his book, \u201cAlien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/community.planetary.org\/events\/copy-book-club-livestream-alien-oceans-by-kevin-peter-hand\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Join us<\/a> with your questions and thoughts about whether we may finally discover extraterrestrial life in the warm, salty oceans of other worlds. Not yet a member? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetary.org\/membership\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Join today.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This tiny CubeSat will be a big achievement. A team of students at the University of Maryland is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-553274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}