Tag: NASA
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NASA Tests Power Fix on Voyager 1 as Twin Probes Diverge After 49 Years
Voyager 1 needs the fix more urgently than its twin did. It has less power in reserve, has already lost more of its original instruments, and in February this year came close to tripping its own emergency shutdown during a routine roll manoeuvre. That event prompted NASA in April to switch off the Low-energy Charged…
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NASA Administrator Tours Idaho Lab Building Reactor for 2028 Mars Mission
Isaacman and a group of NASA executives toured INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex, meeting the scientists and engineers developing nuclear power for space. The visit followed a period of accelerated activity at the laboratory tied to a May 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which called for at least three nuclear power criticalities…
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NASA, Northrop Grumman repurpose Gateway elements for Moon Base demo missions
Northrop Grumman’s Lunar Infrastructure Demos (LID-1, LID-2 and LID-3) reuse HALO derived technologies to rapidly mature lunar surface power, thermal, autonomy, communications and hosted payload services that can survive the lunar night and scale into persistent infrastructure near the Moon’s South Pole. Graphic: Northrop Grumman NASA’s decision to pivot away from the orbiting Gateway lunar…
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NASA Redirects Gateway Hardware Toward Lunar Surface Demonstration Missions
Gateway was a cornerstone of the Artemis architecture and represented years of international partnership commitments. Redirecting its hardware to surface demonstrations signals that NASA is moving toward establishing a permanent lunar presence on the ground rather than in orbit. The repurposing effort is being carried out in partnership with Northrop Grumman. The hardware in question…
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NASA’s PUNCH Nails Solar Storm Arrival to Within 30 Minutes in Proof-of-Concept Test
Solar storms are caused by coronal mass ejections, huge explosions of material off the Sun. Forecasting when these ejections reach Earth is central to mitigating their impacts on power grids, satellites, and astronauts. Until recently, coronal mass ejections could not be tracked continuously for much of their journey, and could only be observed as they…
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Lego deploys Hubble Space Telescope as detailed desktop model
For 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has looked out into the Universe. Now, Lego is inviting builders to look inward with its latest model of the orbiting observatory. The new Lego Icons Hubble Space Telescope (set no. 11382) was released on August 1 for $140 at the toy company’s stores and its online shop.…
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Intuitive Machines Closes Goonhilly and COMSAT Deals, Adding Ground Stations Ahead of IM-3 and Altus-1
The Company had previously integrated Goonhilly’s ground station capabilities into its IM-1 and IM-2 missions. It now intends to leverage the expanded network and the Goonhilly ground system for IM-3 and Altus-1. IM-3, part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, returns Intuitive Machines to the Moon for the third time, while Altus-1, executed under the Company’s Near…
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NASA Ships Shoebox-Sized Navigation Payload to Intuitive Machines for First Lunar Relay Satellite
Altus-1 is the first of a planned network of lunar relay satellites being developed under Intuitive Machines’ Near Space Network Services contract with NASA. The relays are designed to provide communications and navigation support for missions at the Moon, including the challenging lunar South Pole region where Artemis astronauts will land in 2028 and where…
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Here’s how engineers plan to save the satellite sent to save NASA’s Swift mission
One week ago, more than 200 miles above the Earth, a refrigerator-size satellite making its way toward an attempted rescue of NASA’s $500 million Swift gamma-ray observatory suddenly spun out of control. It didn’t look good. The spacecraft, named Link, was rotating on multiple axes, rendering it unable to maintain a reliable communications link with…
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Spent Falcon 9 Stage Set to Strike the Moon on August 5, Offering a Live Test for Impact Science
The stage is a leftover from the launch that carried Firefly’s Blue Ghost-1 lander to the moon on January 15, 2025. That same flight also carried the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, called Resilience, developed by the Japanese company ispace. An international team led by William Jo, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas,…