Tag: NASA
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Webb Telescope fires thrusters to settle in at destination, a million miles from Earth
An artist’s conception shows the James Webb Space Telescope operating at L2, with the sun, Earth and moon behind its sunshield. (NASA Illustration) The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope successfully fired its thrusters today to put it in position at the destination where it’s expected to probe the mysteries of the universe for years…
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EGS, Jacobs working to finish testing in time for Artemis 1 rollout in mid-February
NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) program and prime launch processing contractor Jacobs are performing final installations, functional checks, and buttoning up the Artemis 1 vehicle in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida before rolling it out to its seaside launch pad for the first time. Rollout to Launch…
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IXPE X-ray observatory completes commissioning, eyes Cassiopeia A for calibration
The pioneering Imaging X-ray Polarimeter Explorer (IXPE) telescope, the first observatory in space to perform detailed polarimetry of some of the highest-energy objects the universe has to offer, has ended its highly-successful commissioning phase just over 30 days after lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center on December 9, 2021, on a SpaceX Falcon 9…
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James Webb Space Telescope fully deploys, Northrop Grumman marks sunshield success
At 18:17 UTC on January 8, 2022, the joint NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) successfully deployed the starboard wing of its massive 6.5-meter mirror — marking the end of the observatory’s intense and critical deployment sequence. The feat capped an impressive series of engineering accomplishments,…
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Astronomers breathe a sigh of relief after Webb Telescope unfolds its mirror in space
NASA’s Bill Ochs and John Durning bump fists in celebration at the Space Telescope Science Institute after the James Webb Space Telescope’s deployment. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls) Two weeks after its Christmas launch, the James Webb Space Telescope finished unwrapping itself today, delighting astronomers in the process. The deployment of JWST’s 18-segment, 21.3-foot-wide primary…
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Expedition 66 concludes 2021 with busy December aboard ISS
While many cultures celebrated their respective holiday traditions on Earth, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) carried on with their busy schedules high above. December 2021 saw three major visiting vehicle movements, one spacewalk, and many of the research and maintenance tasks that allow the ISS to function as one of the world’s…
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Amazon teams up with Lockheed Martin and Cisco to put Alexa voice assistant on NASA’s moon ship
The Callisto console will be tested in NASA’s Orion capsule. (Amazon / Lockheed Martin / Cisco Illustration) Alexa, when are we arriving at the moon? Putting Amazon’s AI-enabled voice assistant on a moon-bound spaceship may sound like science fiction (hello, HAL!). But it’s due to become science fact later this year when a radiation-hardened console…
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Psyche to begin environmental testing ahead of August 2022 launch
As 2022 begins, the ASU (Arizona State University)-led team for the NASA Psyche spacecraft is preparing to conduct thermal vacuum testing in preparation for launch. Psyche is a first-of-a-kind mission set to orbit an M-Type asteroid, scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster this August. Following a three-and-a-half-year transit through the inner solar…
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After a year filled with new missions and discoveries, Mars and its robots look ahead to 2022
After the successful launch of three new Mars missions in the summer of 2020, Mars exploration was looking to have a groundbreaking year in 2021. Astonishingly, all three missions — NASA’s Mars 2020, China’s Tianwen-1, and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter — successfully arrived at Mars in February, and have already sent back amazing…
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Year in Space: Jeff Bezos and his billionaire rivals finally usher in the age of commercial spaceflight
Jeff Bezos uncorks the bubbly after riding Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship. (Blue Origin Photo) For 25 years, I’ve been recapping the top stories about space and looking forward to next year’s trends on the final frontier — and for most of that time, the dawn of the era of commercial spaceflight has been…