Space Flight

Astronaut Gerald “Jerry” Carr passed away on Wednesday at the age of 88. Selected for NASA’s astronaut program in April 1966, Carr performed Capcom duties during the Apollo 8 and Apollo 12 missions and was involved in the development and testing of the lunar roving vehicle (LRV) used by Apollo flight crews. On Nov. 16, […]

An opinion writer for Forbes has postulated that the future of the pilot trade is just that, “semi-professional” monitors of autonomous machines that actually discourage human intervention because we are so sloppy. In a column, Paul Kennard says humans are too imprecise to get the best performance and longevity out of aircraft systems and cost […]

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley rode their SpaceX Dragon capsule to a flawless splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday right on time at 2:48 p.m. EDT marking the U.S.’s successful return to manned space launch business after a nine-year absence. “Welcome back to Planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX,” Mission Control said […]

Boeing has been awarded a contract extending its support of the International Space Station (ISS) through September 2024. The company has been contracted to supply engineering support services, resources and personnel for the ISS activities along with management of some station systems. ISS operations are currently slated to continue until at least 2024. “As the […]

Environmental groups are asking the FAA to do a full-scale environmental assessment on SpaceX’s explosion-prone facility in Texas. Seven organizations have jointly signed a letter to three FAA administrators to look into the activities at the Boca Chica assembly and live test site in south Texas. The site is used for development and testing of […]

A joint NASA-Boeing independent review team has completed its evaluation of three anomalies that occurred during the December 2019 orbital flight test of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule. During the uncrewed test, the Starliner team ran into intermittent space-to-ground communication issues and two software coding errors that resulted in the capsule failing to make it […]

NASA has announced the selection of Kathy Lueders as the agency’s next associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate. Lueders replaces Doug Loverro, who resigned from the position on May 18, less than two weeks before the first crewed launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Although the exact circumstances that led to […]

SpaceX is four for four on the loss of prototypes of its silo-like Starship interplanetary vehicle after Serial Number 4 (SN4) blew up on the test bed in Boca Chica, Texas, on Friday. The spectacular explosion came on the eve of SpaceX’s first manned launch of its Crew Dragon capsule at Cape Canaveral on Saturday. […]

NASA has announced that it will provide nearly $2.4 million in funding to six universities as part of the agency’s Artemis Student Challenges program. According to NASA, the program is designed to “connect … students to the science, technology and missions of Artemis through authentic, mission-driven experiences and learning opportunities.” Artemis Student Challenges is led […]

NASA has announced that it is planning to launch the first crewed mission using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft at 4:32 p.m. EDT on May 27, 2020. The Crew Dragon will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard. According […]