Space Flight

Pilot, astronaut and author Michael Collins passed away on Wednesday at the age of 90. Chosen as one of fourteen members of NASA’s third astronaut group in 1963, Collins first went to space as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 10 mission. He also flew the Apollo 11 mission, piloting the command module while crew members […]

NASA signed a memorandum of understanding this week with the National Science Foundation (NSF) “to collaborate on an initiative to open new avenues to engineering careers for communities underserved and underrepresented in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math].” The collaboration will tap Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) in recruiting and educating the engineers it cites as “essential […]

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on Friday morning and is en route to the International Space Station (ISS). On board Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour are NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut  Akihiko  Hoshide  and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas  Pesquet. Endeavour is expected […]

SpaceX took a giant leap to the top of NASA’s most trusted contractors’ list on Friday when it was tagged to build the next lunar lander for the agency’s Artemis program. The company, led by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, won the $2.9 billion contract by beating out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin partnership and defense contractor […]

The first flight of Ingenuity, the drone helicopter taken to Mars on the Perseverance mission, has been postponed until at least Wednesday after a high-speed rotor test was shut down prematurely on Friday. The spin-up of the counter-rotating rotors to 2500 RPM was cut short when the “watchdog timer” on the craft detected a problem […]

Virgin Galactic introduced the first of its SpaceShip III suborbital spaceplanes, named VSS Imagine, on Tuesday. The third generation SpaceShip features a modular design that will, the company says, “enable improved performance in terms of maintenance access and flight rate.” Virgin Galactic is also in the process of building the second member of the SpaceShip […]

NASA has marked April 8 as the first possible flight date for its Mars helicopter technology demonstrator, which arrived on the planet on Feb. 18 attached to the Perseverance rover. Named Ingenuity, the demonstrator is designed to be the first powered, controlled aircraft to fly on another planet. Once it detaches from the rover, the […]

NASA successfully completed the second hot fire test of the core stage of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Thursday at Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The rocket’s four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines fired for 8 minutes and 19 seconds while running through a series of operational conditions designed to simulate […]

SpaceX has caught the eye of the U.S. Air Force and not because of the occasionally explosive nature of its testing programs. Air Force contractor Ball Aerospace, whose sole business is “building conformal antennas for tactical aircraft,” is working with SpaceX to see if the Starlink satellite internet service has military applications. The deal was […]

After a two-week investigation, the FAA has apparently decided that all is well with the SpaceX Starship interplanetary rocket test program even though its last two rockets blew to smithereens while attempting to land at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, test facility. “The SN9 vehicle failed within the bounds of the FAA safety analysis,” the […]