ScienceSpaceflight Giant Satellite Set for Fiery Reentry After 13 Years of Orbital Creep Europe's ERS-2 satellite is set to meet its demise in a week or so, officially concluding its trailblazing 16-year mission. By Passant Rabie Updated February 8, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Double Plumes Spotted on Jupiter’s Cantankerous Volcanic Moon NASA's spacecraft had another close encounter with Io, revealing what appear to be two volcanic plumes erupting simultaneously from its surface. By Passant Rabie Published February 8, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Pulse-Pounding Photos Recall NASA’s Historic First Untethered Spacewalk, 40 Years On “It may have been one small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me.” By George Dvorsky Published February 7, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight It’ll Be a ‘Miracle’ to Recover Glitching Voyager 1 Probe, Says NASA’s JPL NASA's spacecraft has been suffering from a computer anomaly for months, in what the project manager describes as the "most serious" incident in recent memory. By Isaac Schultz Updated February 7, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight NASA’s JPL Lays Off Hundreds Amid Mars Budget Uncertainties The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is anticipating budget cuts for the upcoming year as NASA awaits final confirmation from Congress. By Passant Rabie Updated February 7, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Perseverance Rover Spots NASA’s Busted Helicopter at Its Final Resting Place Ingenuity will never fly again, forever grounded on the Martian dunes, where it looks incredibly lonely. By Passant Rabie Updated February 6, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Love and Rockets: A Valentine’s Day Launch Aims to Break Moon Landing Jinx After an upsetting string of failures, Intuitive Machines is next in line to attempt the first-ever commercial Moon landing. By George Dvorsky Published February 6, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Piece Falls From Virgin Galactic’s Mothership During Latest Suborbital Flight The company is investigating the incident but claims the wayward object didn't pose a safety issue for the crew on board the spacecraft. By Passant Rabie Updated February 6, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Things You Didn’t Know About NASA’s Mars Rovers The first robot landed on Mars in 1997, and those little guys have left a legacy of hidden messages, lucky pennies, and supposed last words. By Passant Rabie Published February 6, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Russian Cosmonaut Sets New Time Travel Record After Spending 879 Days in Orbit Oleg Kononenko has now spent more time in orbit than any other human and, according to Einsteinian relativity, is now the world’s greatest time traveler. By George Dvorsky Published February 5, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight NASA’s Next-Generation ISS Spacesuit Passes Zero-Gravity Test Former NASA astronauts tested Collins Aerospace’s new spacesuits on a parabolic flight, simulating the weightlessness of space. By George Dvorsky Published February 2, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight NASA Needs Ideas to Study Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Apophis The space agency is hosting a workshop for low cost missions to study Apophis despite having two probes in storage that could fit the bill. By Passant Rabie Published February 2, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Dying Moon Lander Sends Back Final Image Before the Long Lunar Night After a challenging landing, Japan’s SLIM lander is unlikely to survive the extreme cold during a 14-day lunar night. By George Dvorsky Published February 2, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Pentagon Seeks Direct Control Over Elon’s Big Rocket for Select Missions The DoD wants its own Starships for sensitive and dangerous missions—and possibly due to concerns about Elon Musk himself. By George Dvorsky Published February 1, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight NASA’s Mars Helicopter Will Do a ‘Wiggle’ Test After Fatal Malfunction The space agency is still trying to figure out what may have caused Ingenuity's mission-ending damage, leading to the proposed spin test. By Passant Rabie Published February 1, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight SpaceX’s Giant Starship Tapped to Launch Starlab’s Giant Steel Space Station The commercial space station could reach low Earth orbit as early as 2028, just ahead of the planned decommissioning of the ISS. By George Dvorsky Published January 31, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Rocket Lab Is Getting Closer to Achieving Rocket Reusability The company's Electron rocket launched four satellites that will monitor orbital traffic to avoid collisions in space. By Passant Rabie Published January 31, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight Trojan Asteroids Loom Closer as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Fires Up Engine for First Time The asteroid-sleuthing probe is transitioning from its orbit around the Sun to one beyond the orbit of Jupiter. By Passant Rabie Published January 31, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight The Best—and Most Upsetting—Space Images From January Some sensational things happened during the first month of 2024, some good, some bad, and some utterly unexpected. By George Dvorsky Updated January 31, 2024 | Comments (0)
ScienceSpaceflight China Oversteps NASA in Choosing Coveted Shackleton Crater for Its Moon Lander The Chang'e 7 mission is aiming for a coveted spot on the lunar south pole, one that made the list of NASA's candidate landing regions. By Passant Rabie Updated January 31, 2024 | Comments (0)
