Tag: NASA
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The Moon’s next robotic visitor is lining up for landing this weekend
CEDAR PARK, Texas—Early Sunday morning, while most of America is sleeping, a couple dozen engineers in Central Texas will have their eyes glued to monitors watching data stream in from a quarter-million miles away. These ground controllers at Firefly Aerospace hope that their robotic spacecraft, named Blue Ghost, will become the second commercial mission to…
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Falcon 9 launches second lunar mission of 2025 with IM-2 lander
SpaceX launched its second lunar mission of 2025, just over a month after flying the Firefly Blue Ghost and HAKUTO-R M2 Resilience landers to the Moon atop a single Falcon 9. Another Falcon 9, this time with the Intuitive Machines IM-2 NOVA-C lander on board, launched successfully from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy…
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Elon Musk recommends that the International Space Station be deorbited ASAP
In a remarkable statement Thursday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the International Space Station should be deorbited “as soon as possible.” This comment from Musk will surely set off a landmine in the global space community, with broad implications. And it appears to be no idle comment from Musk who, at times, indulges in deliberately…
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Rocket Report: SpaceX lands in the Bahamas; ULA tests modified booster
Welcome to Edition 7.32 of the Rocket Report! It’s true that the US space program has always been political. Domestic and global politics have driven nearly all of the US government’s decisions on major space issues, most notably President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to land astronauts on the Moon amid intense Cold War competition with…
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In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees
Unlike workers at many other federal agencies this week, probationary employees at NASA were not terminated on Tuesday. For much of the day employees at the space agency anticipated a directive from the White House Office of Personnel Management to fire these employees, but it never came. “We were on pins and needles throughout the…
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By the end of today, NASA’s workforce will be about 10 percent smaller
Spread across NASA’s headquarters and 10 field centers, which dot the United States from sea to sea, the space agency has had a workforce of nearly 18,000 civil servants. However, by the end of today, that number will have shrunk by about 10 percent since the beginning of the second Trump administration four weeks ago.…
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NASA nominee previews his vision for the agency: Mars, hard work, inspiration
The likely next leader of NASA, private astronaut and pilot Jared Isaacman, has kept a low profile since the announcement last year that he was President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the space agency. This is understandable, as Isaacman must still be confirmed by the US Senate. No date has yet been put forward for…
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Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander arrives in lunar orbit
While in lunar orbit, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured an image of the Moon’s south pole on the far left. Image: Firefly Aerospace A robotic lander from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is now in orbit around the Moon and going through its final preparations to land in the coming weeks. On Thursday, the company announced that…
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NASA announces new launch date for Crew-10, swap of SpaceX Dragon spacecraft following construction delays
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 members stand in front of a Falcon 9 first-stage booster at SpaceX’s HangarX facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From left are Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency),Pilot Nichole Ayers of NASA, Commander Anne McClain of NASA and Mission Specialist Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos. Image: SpaceX…
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Webb investigates protoplanetary disk in extreme detail, observes glowing interstellar material
The joint NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) James Webb Space Telescope, located at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, recently utilized its extraordinary suite of infrared instruments to investigate and image a protoplanetary disk around a newborn star. Webb’s observations provided scientists with unprecedented views of the disk, material jets, and…