Tag: Human Spaceflight
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Boeing has now lost $2B on Starliner, but still silent on future plans
Boeing announced Monday it lost $523 million on the Starliner crew capsule program last year, putting the aerospace company $2 billion in the red on its NASA commercial crew contract since late 2019. The updated numbers are included in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Risk remains that we may record additional…
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Here’s what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year
SpaceX plans to launch the seventh full-scale test flight of its massive Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket Thursday afternoon. It’s the first of what might be a dozen or more demonstration flights this year as SpaceX tries new things with the most powerful rocket ever built. There are many things on SpaceX’s Starship to-do…
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NASA’s boss-to-be proclaims we’re about to enter an “age of experimentation”
ORLANDO, Florida—On Wednesday, Jared Isaacman made his first public appearance since his nomination earlier this month to become NASA’s next administrator. Although his remarks were short on specifics, Isaacman endorsed a vision that would signal radical departures from the way NASA does business. He talked of commercial investment, a thriving space economy, and going fast…
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Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator. “I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),” Trump…
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Rocket Report: A good week for Blue Origin; Italy wants its own launch capability
Welcome to Edition 7.21 of the Rocket Report! We’re publishing the Rocket Report a little early this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We don’t expect any Thanksgiving rocket launches this year, but still, there’s a lot to cover from the last six days. It seems like we’ve seen the last…
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NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix
The Space Launch System rocket that will dispatch four astronauts on the first Moon mission in more than 50 years passed a major milestone Wednesday. NASA said ground teams inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida lifted the aft assembly of the rocket’s left booster onto the mobile launch platform.…
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The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why
Officials from NASA and Russia’s space agency don’t see eye to eye on the causes and risks of small but persistent air leaks on the International Space Station. That was the word from the new chair of NASA’s International Space Station Advisory Committee last week. The air leaks are located in the transfer tunnel of…
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There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about
The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth. In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an…
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There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about
The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth. In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an…
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For some reason, NASA is treating Orion’s heat shield problems as a secret
For those who follow NASA’s human spaceflight program, when the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield cracked and chipped away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late 2022, what caused it became a burning question. Multiple NASA officials said Monday they now know the answer, but they’re not telling. Instead, agency officials…