Tag: NASA
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Through international collaboration, scientists find cause of InSight’s most powerful Marsquake
An international team of scientists has found the cause of the largest Martian seismic event, or Marsquake, observed by NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) Mars lander. After ruling out a meteor impact, they concluded the event must have been caused by a release of stress within the planet’s crust.…
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Why NASA’s return to the Moon will likely succeed this time
During the height of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union engaged in a struggle across many fronts—economically, politically, diplomatically, and more. As part of this they were competing for hearts and minds of nations caught between the two superpowers. The Space Race in the 1960s was all about geopolitics. By accomplishing feats…
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ISS Roundup: Expedition 70 underway, Rubio’s record stay in space, technical issues, completed EVAs
The last few months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been eventful. Expedition 70 is underway after two crew handovers, a bearing on a solar array rotary joint seized up, and a coolant leak on the Russian segment occurred. Currently, the ISS crew has completed Russian EVA-61, although key objectives were not fully accomplished,…
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Astronomers say new telescopes should take advantage of “Starship paradigm”
This slide from a presentation by Lee Feinberg, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, shows concepts for a space telescope fitting inside the volumes of a SpaceX Starship rocket and a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket. Credit: NASA/Lee Feinberg A consensus among leading American astronomers is that NASA’s next wave of great observatories…
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NASA should consider commercial alternatives to SLS, inspector general says
In recent years NASA has acknowledged that its large Space Launch System rocket is unaffordable and has sought to bring its costs down to a more reasonable level. The most recent estimate is that it costs $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, and this does not include add-ons such as ground systems, integration,…
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NASA just launched the Psyche mission—no one knows what it will find
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A roughly 3-ton spacecraft launched Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-year trip to an enigma in the asteroid belt, an unusual metallic world the size of Massachusetts that could hold clues about the formation of Earth and other rocky planets. This mission, named Psyche, will survey its…
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Live coverage: SpaceX Falcon Heavy launches NASA’s Psyche on mission to a metal asteroid
Mission Status Center
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Rocket Report: European rockets finally fly; Artemis II core stage issues
Welcome to Edition 6.15 of the Rocket Report! We’re now more than three-quarters of the way through the year, and as of Thursday, there have been 156 orbital launches since January 1. Last year, which set a record for global launch activity, we didn’t reach 156 orbital launches until mid-November. At the cadence set so…
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Falcon Heavy launches NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe
Falcon Heavy climbs away from Kennedy Space Center, carrying NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now. Getting off to a ground-shaking start, NASA’s $1.2 billion Psyche asteroid probe roared into space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket Friday, setting off on a 2.2-billion-mile voyage to a rare, metal-rich asteroid that may hold clues about how the…
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NASA finds water and organics in asteroid sample—possible clues to origin of life
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas—As they unveiled the first samples recovered from an asteroid on Wednesday, scientists were giddy at the prospects of what this material will tell us about the origin of our planet and possibly even ourselves. After seven years in space, a small spacecraft carrying samples from the asteroid Bennu landed in a…