Items tagged with spacecraft
NASA’s historic Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has flown its final mission on the Red Planet after a communications dropout led to at least one damaged rotor blade. The iconic helicopter was originally designed as a technology demonstration to provide up to five experimental test flights over a 30-day period. It lasted for...
Read more...
Astrobotic’s failed attempt to land its Peregrine lander carrying scientific payloads on the lunar surface is about to come to a dramatic close as the spacecraft storms toward Earth’s atmosphere. The spacecraft, built as part of a contract with NASA, is expected to burn up completely as it makes its fiery descent back...
Read more...
A NASA curation team was finally able to remove two stubborn fasteners that have been keeping the space agency from being able to retrieve the remainder of a sample collected from asteroid Bennu. The curation team had to pause the disassembly of the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head from...
Read more...
As NASA continues to prepare to put humans back on the surface of the Moon—for the first time since 1972—the space agency says its needs a bit more time before moving forward with launching its Artemis II and Artemis III missions. The Artemis campaigns will be the first to land a woman and a person of color on the...
Read more...
The first lunar landing mission to launch from the United States since 1972 has successfully lifted off carrying an assortment of payloads, including cremated human remains and dog hair. Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission One contains 265 capsules with human remains, including the creator and several members of the...
Read more...
NASA’s Juno spacecraft made the closest flyby of Jupiter’s moon lo of any spacecraft in over 20 years, while taking incredible new images of the volcanic moon. The orbiter came within nearly 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the surface of what NASA refers to as the “most volcanic world in our solar system.”
During...
Read more...
The US Space Force, in partnership with SpaceX, just launched the Boeing X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A two nights ago. The top-secret flight is the seventh flight for the X-37B program and its first launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy...
Read more...
Sierra Space has delivered its Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, to NASA for some hardcore training. The uncrewed spaceplane is scheduled to launch a demonstration mission in 2024 to the orbital complex of NASA’s commercial resupply services.
The Dream Chaser, built by Sierra Space in Louisville, Colorado...
Read more...
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM for short) recently sent back incredible imagery of the moon’s surface. The SLIM spacecraft successfully reached lunar orbit on Christmas Day, ahead of its historic attempt to land on the moon.
In a tweet sent by JAXA...
Read more...
NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment beamed a video featuring Taters the cat from 18.6 million miles away. The record-setting ultra-high definition streaming video was part of a NASA technology demonstration on December 11, 2023.
The DSOC experiment is NASA’s first demonstration of optical...
Read more...
NASA’s interstellar Voyage 1 spacecraft has encountered a glitch and needs repaired from 15 billion miles away. For the time being, the spacecraft cannot send any legible science or engineering data back to Earth.
NASA says that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has traveled farther than any other craft to date. The space...
Read more...
A new image captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter highlights a view of Mars that will help scientists gain new insights into the Martian atmosphere. The panoramic view was stitched together using 10 images, creating the view of the Martian landscapes below clouds and dust.
NASA engineers spent three months preparing...
Read more...
NASA caught a frickin’ laser beam from 10 million miles away and the space agency finds it groovy baby. No, the near-infrared laser beam was not from Dr. Evil’s deep space lair, but rather from NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment.
During its journey to the main asteroid belt between Mars and...
Read more...
Early last year, an obsolete part of a Chinese space rocket crashed into the lunar surface, leaving behind two visible craters. A team of researchers from the University of Arizona found definitive proof it caused the duo of craters and that it also had an undisclosed payload.
The event was unique in that most...
Read more...
SpaceX's launch of its uncrewed Starship garnered some astounding images during the second major flight test. The spacecraft achieved a height three times higher than its previous launch before it exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
The company hoped Starship would have been able to successfully orbit Earth before...
Read more...
NASA's Lucy spacecraft surprises the space agency again with another unexpected find. Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids as it becomes the first mission to investigate the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
Lucy is on a 12-year mission that will take the spacecraft right into the midst of a belt of...
Read more...
NASA’s Lucy probe cuts its teeth with its first up-close encounter with an asteroid named Dinkinesh before moving on to observe 10 other asteroids on its 12-year journey. Lucy had been tracking the asteroid since September 3, 2023.
According to NASA, the encounter was the first time that Lucy got a close look at an...
Read more...
The European Space Agency's Mars Express takes adventurers on a gorgeous ride across Mars's 'labyrinth of night'. The spacecraft has been exploring the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface of the Red Planet since 2004.
ESA shared footage captured by the Mars Express spacecraft as it flew over the eastern part of...
Read more...
NASA has sent a request for proposal for an estimated $1B US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), a spacecraft aimed at deorbiting the International Space Station (ISS) and ultimately safely crashing back to Earth. The United States, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency (ESA) have all committed to operating the station...
Read more...
NASA is making slight adjustments to the flight path of its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is scheduled to deliver a sample capsule from Bennu, an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building, back to Earth. The final correction maneuvers ensured the spacecraft lands in a predetermined area on the Defense Department's...
Read more...
Russia's attempt to land a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon for the first time in decades ended abruptly as the spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface. The country's last successful landing on the Moon was in 1976 with the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission.
The Luna 25 lunar lander launched onboard a Soyuz 2.1...
Read more...
NASA's Europa Clipper received a massive upgrade in preparation for its launch scheduled for October 2024. The space agency added a high-gain antenna, one ET would have loved to have had to phone home with, that will enable the spacecraft to communicate with ground control back here on Earth from hundreds of millions...
Read more...
