Day: September 7, 2024

Boeing Starliner Capsule Lands Back On Earth, Without Astronauts, To End Troubled Test Flight.

Starliner’s long space odyssey is over. The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), touching down in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 11:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6). “Great landing of Calyspo!” NASA astronaut Suni Williams said on the agency’s webcast. “I don’t think …

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NASA Delays ESCAPADE Mars Launch On Blue Origin’s Giant New Glenn Rocket To 2025 To Avoid Potential Cost Overruns.

Blue Origin’s huge New Glenn rocket won’t debut next month after all. New Glenn, the company’s partially reusable new heavy lifter, had been scheduled to launch NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars probes from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida during an eight-day window that opens on Oct. 13. But that’s no longer the plan. “The …

NASA Delays ESCAPADE Mars Launch On Blue Origin’s Giant New Glenn Rocket To 2025 To Avoid Potential Cost Overruns. Read More »

Boeing’s Starliner All Packed Up To Return To Earth From ISS Today.

Boeing’s Starliner capsule is ready to come home at long last. The two NASA astronauts who rode Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS), Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, “have finished packing Starliner with cargo and configuring its cabin for return,” NASA officials announced in an update on Thursday (Sept. 5). “The duo closed Starliner’s …

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China To Test Lunar-Soil Bricks In Space To Pave The Way For Its Planned Moon Base.

China will send samples of bricks to its space station in the coming months to test their durability in extreme conditions and potential use in building moon bases. Samples of bricks made of varying compositions from lunar soil simulant will be launched to the Tiangong space station aboard the upcoming Tianzhou 8 cargo mission, according …

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China’s Mysterious Space Plane Returns To Earth After 268 Days In Orbit.

China’s mysterious space plane has returned to Earth after spending over 8 months in orbit. The reusable spacecraft landed at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in a remote section of northwest China on Friday (Sept. 6). It launched from the same site atop a Long March 2F rocket on Dec. 14, 2023, on its third …

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NASA’s Solar Sail Spacecraft Is Visible In The Night Sky.

An experimental NASA solar sail can be seen in the night sky as it orbits the Earth. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) launched in April 2024 atop a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The mission is designed to test solar sail technology to help NASA develop larger spacecraft in the future using this next-generation …

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