Two Mars-bound smallsats that will fly on the highly anticipated debut of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket have arrived at their launch site in Florida. The satellite duo, known as ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”), are set to launch atop New Glenn no earlier than Oct. 13 from Cape Canaveral Space Force […]
More than four months after launching to space, a solar-sailing spacecraft has successfully spread its wings above our planet. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) caught a ride to space on April 24 on Rocket Lab’s Electron vehicle and, at the end of August, NASA shared in a release that its mission operators verified
NASA’s Solar Sail Successfully Spreads Its Wings In Space. Read More »
Well, that was quick. SpaceX can resume flying its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced this evening (Aug. 30). The news comes just two days after a Falcon 9 first stage crashed while attempting to land after a successful launch of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites, spurring an investigation overseen by the
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Can Return To Flight, FAA Says. Read More »
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, will be the first Korean-American astronaut to perform a long-duration mission. Kim will spend eight months on the International Space Station (ISS), starting in March 2025, as part of the Expedition 72 and 73 crews, NASA officials announced Wednesday (Aug. 28). He will fly to space
NASA has removed two astronauts from a forthcoming SpaceX mission to make room for two others needing a new ride home from space. The SpaceX Crew-9 mission will now fly only NASA astronaut and U.S. Space Force commander Nick Hague, and Roscosmos astronaut and mission specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA
Blue Origin set a new record on its latest space tourism flight. That mission, called NS-26, sent six people to suborbital space and back this morning (Aug. 29) from Blue Origin‘s West Texas spaceport, reaching a maximum altitude of 64.6 miles (104 kilometers) above ground level. One of them was Karsen Kitchen, a 21-year-old student
Blue Origin Launches Youngest Woman Beyond Kármán Line. Read More »
The four astronauts of SpaceX’s private Polaris Dawn mission that will perform the first commercial spacewalk are taking delays to their launch in stride. The mission was initially slated to launch Aug. 27, but was delayed to Aug. 28 due to technical issues. Polaris Dawn was then postponed two more days, to no earlier than
A search of more than 1,300 galaxies for extraterrestrial signals has helped to constrain expectations as to how many communicating, technological civilizations may exist beyond Earth. Conducted with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia, the search concerned itself with low radio frequencies in the 80–300 MHz range. For comparison, SETI (which stands for Search
SETI Searches For Alien Life In Over 1,000 Galaxies Using Unexplored Radio Frequencies. Read More »
NASA’s effort to return humans to the moon have been hit with another critical report on its progress. The NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a scathing report on the Mobile Launcher 2 (ML-2) project. ML-2 is needed to transport NASA’s enormous Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket to the launch pad. The
NASA Inspector General Issues Harsh Report On Delayed SLS Mobile Launcher Project. Read More »
An apparent record-breaking ancient astronomy “observatory,” complete with a sundial, was uncovered recently during a temple dig in the old capital of lower Egypt. The mud-brick temple building was found in a larger complex known now as the Temple of Buto, but which was named after Wadjet during the sixth century BCE, from which it
Archaeologists Find Huge, 2,500-year-old Egyptian Astronomy Observatory. Read More »
