China has released new images from its Zhurong rover, which began wheeling its way around Mars in late May. One of the photos is a lovely selfie of Zhurong posed next to its landing platform. The “touring group photo,” as the China National Space Administration calls it in a blog post, was taken with a […]
The launch of NASA’s next flagship space telescope has been pushed back another seven months. The liftoff of the $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed from March 2021 until Oct. 31 of that year, NASA officials announced today (July 16), citing technical difficulties as well as complications imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. […]
Japan plans to deploy a baseball-sized rover to explore the moon’s surface in 2022. The Japanese company ispace will deliver the small rover to the moon for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) using the commercial HAKUTO-R lander. JAXA will use the rover to snap pictures of the moon and collect data on lunar dust […]
General Motors says it aims to help NASA bring electric and autonomous vehicles to the moon this decade to allow Artemis astronauts to zip around the lunar surface. The legacy car company announced Wednesday that it’s teaming up with longtime NASA contractor Lockheed Martin to develop new moon buggies. “These next-generation rovers will dramatically extend […]
Virgin Galactic’s private spaceflight program is back on track. As promised, the company completed a rocket-powered test flight on May 22nd that saw VSS Unity, its two pilots and NASA experiments reach space. It’s the first human spaceflight out of Virgin’s New Mexico-based Spaceport America. The flight was originally slated for December 2020, but failed […]
Google said on Thursday that it signed a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use the space company’s growing satellite internet service, Starlink, with its cloud unit. SpaceX will install Starlink terminals at Google’s cloud data centers around the world, aiming to utilize the cloud for Starlink customers and enabling Google to use the satellite […]
NASA and Axiom Space have signed an order for the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station to take place no earlier than January 2022. NASA and Axiom Space have agreed to take civilans to the ISS. Axiom Mission 1 will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida “no earlier than January 2022,” […]
The SpaceX Crew-1 mission has returned safely to Earth and shattered a record in the process. NASA has confirmed that Crew-1 broke a record for the longest mission duration for a crewed American spacecraft, with the Crew Dragon capsule Resilience lasting 168 days in orbit before splashdown off the coast of Florida at 2:56AM Eastern. […]
After making history and completing two additional flights, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter could soon attempt even more ambitious forays into the skies of the Red Planet. On Friday, NASA announced it plans to transition the rotorcraft to an operational role once it completes its remaining test flights. NASA says those flights will involve more precise […]
A new international crew of astronauts, riding SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, has arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). The astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Friday morning. […]
Amazon bought nine launches from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance to send its internet-beaming Kuiper satellites into space, the companies announced. It is Amazon’s first launch agreement. The nine rockets will help it start putting the more than 3,200 satellites that will eventually make up its Project Kuiper constellation in low Earth orbit. […]
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter nailed a successful debut test flight on Mars, engineers confirmed early Monday morning. The tiny spacecraft lifted itself 10 feet off the Martian surface for 39 seconds, marking the first powered flight on another world. The historic demonstration opens up tantalizing possibilities for a new mode of planetary travel that could send […]
NASA has rescheduled the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars helicopter to April 19th at 3:30AM ET, the agency announced Saturday. The four-pound helicopter that arrived on Mars on February 18th with its parent rover Perseverance has seen its first flight delayed a few times. It touched the surface of Mars on April 4th, and […]
NASA picked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to receive $2.9 billion to build a lunar lander as part of the Artemis mission to send humans to the Moon by 2024, NASA announced today. It’s a major vote of confidence in SpaceX from NASA as no other company received money. There were three major contenders for the project. […]
NASA engineers have decided to delay the Ingenuity helicopter’s debut flight on Mars to at least Wednesday, April 14th, after running into a minor computer glitch during a rotor spin test late Friday night, the agency said on Saturday. NASA stressed that Ingenuity was “safe and healthy,” and that it was reviewing telemetry from the […]