Tag: Space
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The amazing helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, will fly no more
Something has gone wrong with NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore. (Shortly after this…
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NASA loses, and then recovers, contact with its historic Mars helicopter
The US space agency prompted widespread dismay in the spaceflight community on Friday evening when it announced that communication had been lost with the Mars Ingenuity helicopter during its most recent flight on Thursday, January 18. “During its planned descent, communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown,” according to a statement…
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What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back?
Taylor Wang was deeply despondent. A day earlier, he had quite literally felt on top of the world by becoming the first Chinese-born person to fly into space. But now, orbiting Earth on board the Space Shuttle, all of his hopes and dreams, everything he had worked on for the better part of a decade…
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Meet Helios, a new class of space tug with some real muscle
In recent years there have been a number of modest “tugs” brought online to ferry small satellites to designated orbits. These miniature spacecraft provide so-called last-mile service and are particularly useful for satellites that launch as a part of rideshare missions and seek to reach a different altitude or inclination than that of the primary…
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Daily Telescope: A beautiful supernova remnant from an uncertain age
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a…
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No, the James Webb Space Telescope hasn’t found life out there—at least not yet
The rumors have been out there for a while now, percolating through respectable corners of the astronomy and astrobiological community, that the James Webb Space Telescope has found a planet with strong evidence of life. Some of this sentiment recently bubbled into the public view when the British news magazine The Spectator published an item…
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Rocket Report: A Chinese launch you must see; Vulcan’s stunning debut
Welcome to Edition 6.26 of the Rocket Report! We’re just 11 days into the new year, and we’ve already had two stunning rocket debuts. Vulcan soared into space on Monday morning, and then a medium-lift rocket from China, Gravity-1, made a picture-perfect launch from a mobile pad in the Yellow Sea. It feels like this…
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After its impressive first flight, here’s what’s next for the Vulcan rocket
Early Monday morning, the hefty Vulcan rocket streaked into orbit for the first time, nailing its performance targets and delivering a substantial success to United Launch Alliance on the vehicle’s first test flight. Unfortunately for the mission’s primary customer, Astrobotic, there was subsequently an issue with the lunar lander’s propulsion system. However, Astrobotic was quick…
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Citing “crew safety,” NASA delays upcoming Artemis missions by about a year
Citing “crew safety” as the agency’s chief priority, NASA officials outlined a new schedule for the Artemis lunar program on Tuesday. The roughly one-year delay for each of the next three missions came as little surprise, given the significant amount of work left to be done before astronauts can return to the Moon later this…
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The situation with Astrobotic’s lunar lander appears to be quite dire
On Monday morning, the new Vulcan rocket made a smashing debut, launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and performing flawlessly. After 50 minutes of flight, the rocket’s upper stage deployed its primary payload—the Peregrine lunar lander—into a Moon-bound trajectory. United Launch Alliance declared complete success with its new rocket. After the deployment…