Tag: NASA
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NASA freezes SpaceX’s lunar lander cash due to protests from Blue Origin, Dynetics
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s Starship rocket ship on the moon. (SpaceX Illustration) NASA says it’ll hold up on its payments to SpaceX for developing its Starship super-rocket as a lunar lander while the Government Accountability Office sorts out challenges to the $2.9 billion contract award from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture as well…
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Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins dies at 90
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION NASA astronaut Michael Collins inside an Apollo command module simulator. Credit: NASA Michael Collins, the man who stayed behind aboard the Apollo 11 command module while crewmates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the moon and walked into history, has passed away after a battle with cancer,…
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Elon Musk taunts Jeff Bezos over Blue Origin’s challenge to SpaceX’s contract for lunar lander
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have been rivals in space for a decade. (Musk Photo: TED via YouTube; Bezos Photo: GeekWire / Kevin Lisota) The billionaire space battle just got kicked up a notch, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture challenging NASA’s award of a $2.9 billion lunar…
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NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter aces first longer-range flight on Mars
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated April 28 with new color image showing the Perseverance rover. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flew farther and faster Sunday than the rotorcraft’s first two test flights in the Martian atmosphere, traveling the length of a football field while exceeding distances and speeds achieved during testing on Earth, officials said. On Sunday’s test flight, the…
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Crew Dragon Endeavour returns to station on Crew-2 mission
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Meghan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and Japanese Space Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide have joined the Expedition 64 crew as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour docked successfully to the International Space Station (ISS) at 5:08 AM EDT (09:08 UTC) on Saturday 24 April. Crew-2 is the first crewed…
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NASA’s Mars helicopter completes second, higher flight
This is the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured it with its color camera during its second successful flight test on April 22, 2021. At the time this image, Ingenuity was 17 feet (5.2 meters) above the surface and pitching…
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Off the Earth, for the Earth; Endeavour lifts off with international crew for six month mission
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour began its second mission Friday with a crew of four astronauts on a long-duration trip to the International Space Station. Liftoff, atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, occurred right on time at 05:49:02 EDT / 09:49:02 UTC on Friday, 23 April 2021. The Crew-2 mission will see…
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Our interview with Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s acting administrator
Stephen Clark, Spaceflight Now’s editor, asked NASA’s acting administrator about the space agency’s commercial crew and Artemis programs during a one-on-one virtual interview Tuesday, April 20. Email the author. Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
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After NASA taps SpaceX’s Starship for first Artemis landings, agency looks to on-ramp future vehicles
Following a year of testing and development, NASA recently selected SpaceX’s Starship-based Human Landing System (HLS) to land astronauts on the moon under the Artemis program. SpaceX’s proposal was the highest rated and lowest cost offering among three studied designs, the others provided by Blue Origin’s National Team and Dynetics. In contrast to NASA’s stated…
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SpaceX, Crew-2 mission cleared for launch as eyes turn to the weather
The Crew-2 mission’s Launch Readiness Review, or LRR, has been completed at the Kennedy Space Center, with managers from NASA, SpaceX, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) formally clearing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon Endeavour for launch of four international astronauts to the Space Station…