Space Flight

NASA’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, logged its 34th successful flight last week, staying in the air for 18 seconds and reaching a maximum altitude of 5 meters. The brief flight was the helicopter’s first with its latest software update, which is expected to add capabilities including hazard avoidance during landing and the use of digital elevation […]

NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched last Wednesday (Nov. 16) atop the Artemis 1 Space Launch System (SLS), sent back compelling images of the Earth and made a low pass over the dark-side surface of the moon on Monday. “Low” is relative, of course, but descending to within 81 miles of the moon’s surface yielded some breathtaking […]

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) set a new endurance record on Saturday, landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after spending 908 days in orbit. The uncrewed flight was the sixth for the Boeing-built vehicle, which has now traveled over 1.3 billion miles and logged 3,774 days in space. According to Boeing, the mission hosted […]

NASA has confirmed that an object discovered underwater off of the east coast of Florida is an artifact from the space shuttle Challenger. According to the agency, the artifact was located by a film crew on a dive looking for the wreckage of a World War II-era aircraft. NASA stated that it is still considering […]

China’s latest piece of uncontrolled space junk hit the Pacific Ocean 620 miles off Acapulco in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, but the most serious impact was on the other side of the world. Spain briefly closed large areas of its airspace on Friday morning when a Chinese booster rocket used to propel a section […]

NASA has awarded medals to six Northrop Grumman Corporation employees for their contributions in designing and building the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb Telescope team vice president and program manager Scott Willoughby and director and chief engineer Charlie Atkinson received NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal; Webb director of vehicle engineering and sunshield manager Jim Flynn […]

The NASA SpaceX Crew-5 mission docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday evening, beginning a six-month stay for NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. The mission, which used SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, Endurance, launched from the […]

NASA wrapped up its first-ever planetary defense technology demonstration on Monday evening, crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid with the goal of altering its orbit. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) targeted the asteroid Dimorphos, which measures 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter and orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos. The 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) spacecraft hit […]

NASA has waved off its third attempt at launching the Artemis I uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft. Scheduled for Sept. 27, the launch was postponed due to weather conditions related to the approach of Hurricane Ian, which is currently forecast to make landfall in Florida on Thursday. […]

The FAA has grounded Blue Origin’s space tourism flights after one of its rockets blew up a minute after launch on Monday. The rocket was on an uncrewed suborbital mission when something went wrong at 65 seconds. The rocket was enveloped in flame while the crew capsule, which was carrying 36 scientific and technological payloads, […]