NASA has resumed preparations for a key hot fire test of the first Space Launch System (SLS) core booster, but the agency is keeping a wary eye on coronavirus cases striking members of the Mississippi-based test team, Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on July 17.
NASA’s long-running development of the Orion crew capsule for the safe launch and re-entry of up to four astronauts on missions to the Moon and Mars fails to account for more than $17 billion in related costs, a July 16 inspector general’s (IG) audit shows.
The founder of the small-launch company discusses a recent failure of the Electron rocket launch, the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, and Rocket Lab’s evolution from manufacturing rockets to building spacecraft.
After overcoming years of delays to resolve technical issues, launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a long-awaited successor to the 30-year-old Hubble observatory, is being postponed at least seven months, largely due to pandemic-related workplace shutdowns, NASA said on July 16.
NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken all but completed a long-running series of battery replacements on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) during a 6-hr. spacewalk July 16.
Virgin Galactic’s founding CEO George Whitesides is relinquishing daily management of the fledgling space tourism company to focus on future programs, including point-to-point hypersonic and orbital space transportation, the company said on July 15.
The first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is about halfway through an eight-part Green Run test program at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, with a full-duration static firing of the booster’s four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines expected in October, Boeing Vice President and SLS Program Manager John Shannon said on July 15.
Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur IV rocket ended a nearly three-year hiatus with a July 15 launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, to put a quartet of classified satellites into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
With bleak weather forecast, the United Arab Emirates’ Mars Hope mission, which was slated to lift off on July 17 from Japan’s Tenegashima Space Center, faces a second launch delay.
The first entirely Chinese mission to Mars may depart within two weeks, following arrival of the spacecraft at the Wenchang launch base on Hainan island.
The commercial human lander system is a critical part of the Trump administration’s directive that NASA accelerate its return to the surface of the Moon with human explorers from 2028 to 2024.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa 2 asteroid sample return mission will drop off materials from the asteroid Ryugu as it passes by Earth on Dec. 6 Japan time.
Interest in the human and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars is on the rise—politically influenced budgets, the global economy and COVID-19 pandemic permitting.
With the interplanetary highway to Mars poised to open next week, spacecraft owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and NASA have been loaded onto their respective launch vehicles at Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center and Cape Canaveral.
