Space

Virgin Orbit’s 70-foot-long (21-meter) LauncherOne rocket ignites its liquid-fueled engine after release from the company’s Boeing 747 carrier aircraft. Credit: Virgin Orbit Virgin Orbit delivered seven small CubeSats for NASA, the U.S. military, Spire, and the Polish company SatRevolution into orbit Thursday with its air-launched rocket after release from a jumbo jet off the coast of California. The launch marked ...

File photo of a Faclcon 9 rocket on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now Forecasters expect brisk winds and chilly temperatures for a prime time, full moon launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with another batch of Starlink internet satellites Monday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There’s a 70 percent chance ...

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The mission will launch 105 small satellites from customers in 20 nations. SFN Live SpaceX Webcast SpaceX Mission Audio SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday from Cape Canaveral with 105 satellites ranging from the size of ...

I grew up watching Star Trek inspired by what Trek imagined the future could be. Earth had done away with poverty, disease, war. Humanity, in cooperation with other alien civilizations, explored the Galaxy on ships like the USS Enterprise doing good where possible. Diplomatic missions, crisis relief, medical aid. Star Trek is a view of what humanity could be if ...

Sich-2-30 satellite was developed and assembled by the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye State Design Office / Photo credit: Yuzhnoye State Design Office Sich-2-30 satellite was launched at the Cape Canaveral U.S. Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in a framework of the Transporter-3 mission by SpaceX’ Falcon-9 heavy launch vehicle The mission Transporter-3 is a so-called smallsat dedicated rideshare mission ...

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket. The air-launched rocket will climb into orbit with seven small satellites after release from a Boeing 747 carrier aircraft southwest of Los Angeles. Virgin Orbit Webcast Source

File photo of a previous Astra rocket on a launch pad in Alaska. Credit: Astra Tests are beginning this week at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for the first flight of Astra’s small satellite launcher from the Florida spaceport, following the company’s successful November demonstration mission from Alaska. Astra’s launch vehicle, dubbed Rocket 3.3 and known by its tail number ...

Artist’s illustration of the fully deployed James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Still cruising toward its operating orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope completed a transformation into its final dimension Saturday with the last of some 50 post-launch deployments, the unfolding of the observatory’s 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) primary mirror. Mission controllers at the ...

To date, a total of 4,884 extrasolar planets have been confirmed in 3,659 systems, with another 8,414 additional candidates awaiting confirmation. In the course of studying these new worlds, astronomers have noted something very interesting about the “rocky” planets. Since Earth is rocky and the only known planet where life can exist, astronomers are naturally curious about this particular type ...

STORY WRITTEN FOR  & USED WITH PERMISSION Northrop Grumman teams work with the sunshield on the James Webb Space Telescope during ground testing. Credit: Northrop Grumman Engineers activating the James Webb Space Telescope decided Sunday to hold off tightening up the observatory’s critical sunshade to allow more time to check out the performance of its power systems and overall behavior now ...