Space

Although the giant SLS core stage did come to life on the B-2 test stand Jan 16, the four RS-25 engines shutdown early at only 68 seconds into a planned 8-minute test. Photos via NASA TV Eighteen years to the day since the last launch of shuttle Columbia, NASA, Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne engineers have taken a significant step towards ...

(11 January 2021 – Infostellar) Infostellar has announced the arrival of Steve Montgomery as the company’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO). In this role, Steve will lead the company’s efforts in building and operating Infostellar’s global network of ground stations, including partner and company-owned assets. Steve will also leverage StellarStation by driving the technical development and expansion of the company’s ground ...

It’s almost time. Soon the James Webb Space Telescope will be on its way to the Sun/Earth L2 Lagrange point and will begin its at least 5-year science mission. Really, it’s going to happen. Despite several delays since the program began in 1996 and a budget that has exceeded the original by several billion dollars, the launch of the JWST ...

Today, at close to 04:30 PM local time (CST), NASA achieved a major milestone with the development of the Space Launch System (SLS) – the heavy launch system they will use to send astronauts back to the Moon and crewed missions to Mars. As part of a Green Run Hot Fire Test, all four RS-25 engines on the SLS Core ...

Live coverage of the Green Run Hot Fire test of NASA’s Space Launch System core stage at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on .  Editor’s Note: NASA TV’s live video coverage of the SLS hot fire test begins at 3:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT) Saturday. Source

(14 January 2021 – Altius Space Machines) Voyager Space Holdings subsidiary, Altius Space Machines has achieved a significant milestone: a successful first launch of the company’s DogTags universal grapple fixtures into space aboard OneWeb’s satellites. This is the first of many planned launches for Altius’ DogTags, as the company is slated to produce grapple fixtures for all of OneWeb’s remaining ...

If human beings intend to become an interplanetary species (or interstellar, for that matter), then we are going to need new propulsion methods that combine a significant level of thrust with fuel-efficiency. One option that NASA has been exploring for decades is spacecraft that rely on nuclear power, which can take the form of nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP). In ...

SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft departs the International Space Station Tuesday. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now A SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule parachuted to an on-target splashdown Wednesday night west of Tampa, returning more than two tons of experiment specimens from the International Space Station, including live rodents and a dozen bottles of space-aged French wine. The commercial supply ship, flying on autopilot, ...

Artist’s concept of the Human Landing System (HLS). Image Credit: Blue Origin National Team As NASA works to formally “down-select” its Human Landing System (HLS) industrial teams from three to two later this spring, one of those teams—the “National Team”, led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and including Northrop Grumman Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Draper Laboratory—presented the current state ...

It’s always a sad day when a mission comes to an end. And it’s even sadder when the mission never really got going in the first place. That’s where we’re at with NASA’s InSight lander. The entire mission isn’t over, but the so-called Mole, the instrument designed and built by Germany’s DLR, has been pronounced dead. The Mole is, of course, the Heat ...