Ghana Space News
On July 14, 2015, a spacecraft flew by Pluto for the first time! NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft spent 9.5 years making the 3-billion-mile journey to Pluto. When it finally arrived, it took some amazing photos of the dwarf planet’s surface. Most notably, the photos revealed that Pluto has...
On July 13, 1969, the Soviet Union launched its Luna 15 spacecraft on a mission to the moon. Luna 15 was a robotic sample return mission sent to retrieve some lunar soil and bring it back to Earth. It launched just three days before Apollo 11, which brought the first astronauts to the lunar surface...
On July 12, 1989, the European Space Agency launched an experimental communications satellite named Olympus-1. Olympus-1 was the largest civilian telecommunication satellite ever built at the time, and some nicknamed it LargeSat. It weighed 5,758 lbs (2,612 kilograms) at launch, according to ESA...
The Kenya Space Agency KSA, in partnership with STAR.VISION Aerospace has successfully concluded the Spaceborne AI Algorithm Rideshare Programme, marking the end of the final phase of an initiative launched in June 2024. Over the past year, 58 students from 14 Kenyan universities designed, tested...
On July 10, 1962, the communications satellite Telstar 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to beam live television from Europe to the United States. This was the first privately sponsored space-faring mission. Two days after the launch, Telstar 1 transmitted the world’s...
South Africa’s growing space sector took another significant leap forward during the recent SpaceX Transporter-14 rideshare mission, with six local companies collectively supplying 116 products to the global launch. Simera Sense, Dragonfly Aerospace, CubeSpace, CubeCom, NewSpace Systems and Chromar...
On July 8, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis launched on its final mission. Atlantis was the last of NASA’s space shuttles to fly into space. It went on 33 missions since 1985, ferrying astronauts to and from space stations, and even doing some top secret missions for the U.S. military. Mission...
On July 7, 1961, the U.S. Air Force launched a satellite called Discoverer 26 into orbit with a classified payload. It lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 4:29 p.m. local time (2329 GMT). Discoverer 26 was part of a series of reconnaissance or spy satellites whose missions...
On July 6, 1938, an American astronomer named Seth Barnes Nicholson discovered Jupiter’s moon Lysithea. Nicholson spotted Lysithea from Mount Wilson Observatory in California, where he had previously discovered three more Jovian moons. This was the tenth moon astronomers had found at Jupiter...