Tag: NASA
-
Launch Roundup: New Glenn and Starship headline a week dominated by SpaceX missions
SpaceX dominated this week’s launch manifest with two Falcon 9 missions and the seventh flight of its Starship rocket. The two Falcon 9 missions will see the launches of a Transporter rideshare mission, and two Moon landers. Blue Origin’s New Glenn achieved orbit on Thursday morning following the scrub of its maiden flight attempt on…
-
Rocket Report: China launches refueling demo; DoD’s big appetite for hypersonics
Welcome to Edition 7.26 of the Rocket Report! Let’s pause and reflect on how far the rocket business has come in the last 10 years. On this date in 2015, SpaceX made the first attempt to land a Falcon 9 booster on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, the rocket crash-landed.…
-
A taller, heavier, smarter version of SpaceX’s Starship is almost ready to fly
An upsized version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week. The two-mile transfer moved the bullet-shaped spaceship one step closer to launch Monday from SpaceX’s Starbase test site in South Texas. The launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm…
-
NASA defers decision on Mars Sample Return to the Trump administration
For nearly four years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has journeyed across an unexplored patch of land on Mars—once home to an ancient river delta—and collected a slew of rock samples sealed inside cigar-sized titanium tubes. These tubes might contain tantalizing clues about past life on Mars, but NASA’s ever-changing plans to bring them back to Earth…
-
As it happened: NASA announces new path options for Mars Sample Return mission
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, announced changes to the Mars Sample Return mission during a news teleconference on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Read live blog for updates from the briefing.
-
Outgoing NASA administrator urges incoming leaders to stick with Artemis plan
After a long career as a politician from Florida, former astronaut Bill Nelson has served as NASA’s administrator for the last three and a half years. He intends to resign from this position in about two weeks when President Joe Biden ends his term in the White House. Several significant events have happened under Nelson’s…
-
MRO observes dormant InSight lander; collects data on Martian dust movements
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently imaged NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) lander, which has been dormant on the Martian surface for two years. The new imagery highlights movements in Martian surface dust around InSight, providing planetary scientists with more information on Mars’s climate and atmospheric qualities. On Nov.…
-
Elon Musk: “We’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”
Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for outspokenness and controversial comments on his social media site X, he has been relatively restrained when it comes to US space policy in recent years. For example, he has rarely criticized NASA or its overall goal to return humans to the Moon through the Artemis Program. Rather,…
-
A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the space shuttle?
With 39th President Jimmy Carter passing away at the age of 100, we are revisiting this story of how he unexpectedly saved the space shuttle. We’d been chatting for the better part of two hours when Chris Kraft’s eyes suddenly brightened. “Hey,” he said, “Here’s a story I’ll bet you never heard.” Kraft, the man…
-
Nelson: Decision on Mars Sample Return expected before new administration takes office
This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples of rocks and soil being collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech One of the biggest decision points for the space community, how to redesign the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, may be weeks…