Tag: Landing
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HAKUTO-R Mission 2 lost during landing attempt
Just over two years after the Japanese company ispace attempted but failed to land its HAKUTO-R Mission 1, the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Resilience lander attempted a lunar landing this week but was not successful. Mission 2 was to touch down on the lunar surface at 60.5 degrees north and 4.6 degrees west, in Mare Frigoris,…
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Falcon 9 launches two landers to the Moon on the same mission
SpaceX launched not one but two lunar landers to the Moon on the same mission, on the 100th launch from the same pad where the Apollo 11 crew launched to the Moon. A Falcon 9 successfully lifted off during an instantaneous window on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 1:11 AM EST (06:11 UTC) from Launch Complex…
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Starliner Calypso has undocked and returned to Earth without CFT crew
The Boeing Starliner Calypso, which launched to the International Space Station on June 5 with two experienced astronauts on board, is about to undock from ISS after three months on orbit — but with those fliers staying behind on the Station for the next six months while the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission ends without…
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Launch Roundup: SpaceX lands its 300th booster, NASA tests a solar sail, and China launches three more taikonauts
During the last full week of April, planned launches include two Starlink missions and another Falcon 9 flight lifting customer satellites. The first Starlink mission of the week saw another milestone reached with the 300th landing of a Falcon 9 booster on the Group 6-53 mission. The delayed WorldView Legion 1 & 2 mission, which…
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Soyuz MS-17 safely returns three Station crewmembers to Kazakhstan
After more than six months in orbit, the Soyuz MS-17 mission has drawn to a close. The craft departed the International Space Station with undocking right on time at 21:34 EDT on Friday, 16 April (01:34 UTC on Saturday, 17 April). Sergey Ryzhikov, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and Kate Rubins then conducted final landing preparations before the…
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SpaceX completes 2020 manifest with covert flight for NRO
Rounding off a record-breaking and historic launch manifest for 2020, SpaceX conducted its second dedicated launch for the United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on Saturday – following a scrub on Thursday – with a flight-proven Falcon 9 carrying out the NROL-108 mission. Liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) occurred at…
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Video: Soyuz MS-01 lands with three-person space crew
The Soyuz MS-01 capsule safely returns to Earth, bringing back Expedition 49 commander Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency after a 115-day mission that spanned 48.6 million miles to the International Space Station. Landing as seen live Aerial view of…
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Video: Crew members extracted from the Soyuz after landing
One-by-one, the three crew members are pulled from the Soyuz MS-01 capsule and placed in reclining chairs minutes after landing in Kazakhstan. Expedition 49 commander Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency completed a 115-day mission to the International Space Station…
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July 24, 1969: Apollo 11 returns home
Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific today in 1969, fulfilling President Kennedy’s challenge to a nation of landing a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
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July 20, 1976: Landing on the red planet
Today marks the 40th anniversary — July 20, 1976 — of the first U.S. robotic landing on another planet by the Viking 1 spacecraft on Mars.