Space

The GPS III Space Vehicle 01 is shown at Lockheed Martin’s GPS III processing facility. Raytheon is developing the ground stations for the new GPS satellites under the Operational Control Segment program. (Lockheed Martin) WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force will pay $378 million to replace the computer hardware in Raytheon’s troubled Operational Control System after the original provider was ...

Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule from the recent Orbital Flight Test, inside the company’s C3PF processing facility at Kennedy Space Center on Jan 15, 2020, fresh back from New Mexico where the spacecraft landed on Dec 22, 2019. Photo: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace.com Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule which recently flew the Orbital Flight Test mission for NASA is now back ...

Crew Dragon atop Falcon 9 for the In-Flight Abort Test. Photo: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace.com UPDATE – NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 8 a.m. EST Sunday, Jan. 19, for launch. The abort test has a six-hour launch window. Teams are standing down from today’s launch attempt due to poor splashdown and recovery weather. For tomorrow’s launch attempt, meteorologists with ...

SpaceX lofting their Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on the In-Flight Abort Test for NASA from KSC on Jan 19, 2020. Photo: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace.com SpaceX has successfully pulled off a test mission it hopes it will never again have to execute for real: the catastrophic high-altitude failure of a Falcon 9 booster at one of its ...

Thirty-five years ago, this week, Discovery flew Mission 51C, the shuttle’s first totally classified mission. Photo Credit: NASA “Miracle” is a term often applied to many aspects of the space program: from Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight aboard Vostok 1 to the historic first manned lunar landing and from the triumph of Apollo 13 to the safe return of Alexei Ovchinin ...

Artist’s conception of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA/JPL In just a few days from now, one of NASA’s greatest space telescope missions will come to an end. The Spitzer Space Telescope will cease operations on Jan. 30, 2020, after 16 years in service. The news was announced during a special live program on Jan. 22, 2020, to celebrate ...

After successfully boosting Crew Dragon’s Demo-1 mission in March 2019 (left), followed by Canada’s Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) last June (right), Falcon 9 rocket ‘B1051’ stands ready for its third orbital launch on Monday with Starlink-3 from Cape Canaveral. Photo Credit: John Studwell /AmericaSpace.com / SpaceX (right) Only days after triumphantly completing its long-awaited In-Flight Abort Test—destroying a long-serving booster, ...

Discovery touches down at the Kennedy Space Center on 27 January 1985, following the shortest operational flight in the shuttle’s 30-year history. Photo Credit: NASA Thirty-five years ago, this week, the crew of shuttle Discovery—Apollo veteran Ken Mattingly, together with “rookie” astronauts Loren Shriver, Jim Buchli and Ellison Onizuka and Air Force Manned Spaceflight Engineer (MSE) Gary Payton—flew Mission 51C, ...

ESA’s Solar Orbiter (left) is ready for launch next month on an ambitious scientific mission to observe and unlock long asked mysteries of our life-giving star. NASA has science instruments onboard, and ULA’s workhorse Atlas V rocket, which just underwent a successful WDR (right), will be responsible for getting the mission off Earth. Photos: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace (left) / ...

The Apollo 1 crew consisted of (from left) Command Pilot Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White and Pilot Roger Chaffee. Photo Credit: NASA More than five decades ago, tonight, one of the worst tragedies in the history of U.S. space exploration unfolded with horrifying suddenness on Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy in Florida. “The Fire”—as it infamously became known—tore through ...