Tag: NASA
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This Week In Spaceflight: SpaceX’s Raptor breaks records, NASA announces second Artemis Lander
Reviewing the week in spaceflight and upcoming events, it’s been another busy period, including NASA announcing a second lunar lander for Artemis, SpaceX’s Raptor breaking records, and Stratolaunch drop testing Talon-A. Stratolaunch Drops Talon Stratolaunch has finally conducted a drop test of their Talon-A vehicle. Stratolaunch has been working on developing its reusable hypersonic testbed,…
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A private company has an audacious plan to rescue NASA’s last “Great Observatory”
A Delta II rocket launched the Spitzer Space Telescope two decades ago, boosting it to an Earth-trailing orbit, where it drifted away from our planet at a rate of about 15 million kilometers a year. It was the last of NASA’s four “Great Observatories” put into space from 1990 to 2003. Over its planned five-year…
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Skylab at 50 – How the United States entered the space station era
On May 14, 1973, the final Saturn V rocket lifted off to deploy Skylab, America’s first space station. Despite a troubled start to its life, Skylab pioneered long-duration spaceflight, and fifty years later lessons learned in this program are still contributing to the success of the International Space Station. With Apollo 11’s successful landing on…
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Rocket Lab launches NASA’s TROPICS satellites from New Zealand
NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) constellation, having switched launch vehicles after losing two satellites aboard an Astra Rocket 3.3 last year, has launched — this time aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket on a mission titled “Rocket Like A Hurricane” from Launch Complex 1B (LC-1B)…
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With help from NEOWISE, astronomers observe giant star destroying planet for the first time
Using the California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) observatory, a group of scientists has observed an aging star destroying a planet within its own star system for the first time. Astronomers have long believed that such a phenomenon occurred in red giant…
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Artemis II Moon mission transitioning from planning to preparation
The first crewed Artemis mission is now the focus of NASA’s beyond-Earth orbit human spaceflight programs. Mission training for the recently-named crew for the Artemis II test flight is expected to begin in June, at just about the time that the mission integration review will be conducted. The space agency has been planning for the…
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As JUICE struggles with antenna deployment, program manager highlights status of the mission
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) latest interplanetary mission that is set to explore Jupiter and its three largest Moons, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), successfully launched on Friday, April 14, has been touted as a near-perfect feat. JUICE had little-to-no issues during the launch sequence, right from blasting off atop an Ariane 5 rocket…
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has now flown more than 50 times
NASA’s Perseverance rover glimpsed the Ingenuity helicopter earlier this month after the rotorcraft’s 50th flight. This view shows dust accumulation on the vehicle. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s pioneering Mars helicopter Ingenuity continues to outperform its design specifications, having now notched up more than 50 record-breaking forays across the Red Planet’s surface, 10 times as many flights…
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Blue Origin participates in a new round of collaborations with NASA on space tech
One of the modules for the New Glenn rocket sits outside Blue Origin’s Florida factory. (Blue Origin Photo) Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among 12 companies chosen to collaborate with NASA on new technologies that could become part of future missions to the moon and Mars. Blue Origin has signed up…
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EGS launch team applying first SLS launch lessons to future Artemis missions
The NASA Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) program is now working on collecting, analyzing, and applying lessons learned during the long Artemis I launch processing flow to streamline future launch campaigns, beginning with the launch of the first Artemis crew on the Artemis II mission in a couple of years. The first Space Launch System (SLS)…