Spaceflight

Elon Musk says his SpaceX company is developing a new booster system that will launch a cargo mission to Mars by 2022, followed by manned missions in 2024. Moreover, the new system, which he calls the BFR, will be capable of re-entry and reuse, making hypersonic passenger service between cities on earth practical and affordable. […]

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser left the ground at Edwards Air Force Base on Wednesday but the real testing is just about to begin, more than 35 years after the idea for a small, reusable spacecraft was given form by the Soviet Union. According to Wired, the 30-foot-long “space utility vehicle” was hoisted to 12,500 […]

Lockheed Martin brought their simulator for the vehicle they hope will transport people to Mars and maybe farther. We talked with their Deputy Director for Orion about how a sim shapes the design of the real article. view on YouTube

SpaceX launched two rockets in three days and brought both back to barges on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. On Friday, company CEO Elon Musk wasn’t sure he’d get his rocket back because it was going to endure the hottest and fastest re-entry to date. “Rocket is extra toasty and hit the deck hard (used […]

NASA has winnowed a list of over 18,300 applicants down to twelve astronaut candidates—ASCANs in the NASA terminology. “We look forward to the energy and talent of these astronauts fueling our exciting future of discovery,” said acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot. “Between expanding the crew on board the space station to conduct more research than […]

Paul Allen’s ambitious, fixed-wing satellite launch platform, the Stratolaunch, rolled out of its hangar Wednesday to begin ground and taxi testing. The colossal twin-fuselage aircraft, built by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, is projected to be—by wingspan—the largest aircraft to have ever taken flight, at 385 feet wide. The prototype has a 500,000-pound empty weight, a […]

A press release from The Museum of Flight in Seattle invites members of the public to come see the golf ball Alan Shepard hit from the surface of the moon on Feb. 6, 1971. “He shanked the ball so hard that it left lunar orbit and entered a Trans-Earth trajectory. It’s likely that ball simply […]

Blue Origin will be the 2016 winner of the Collier Trophy “for successfully demonstrating rocket booster reusability with the New Shepard human spaceflight vehicle through five successful test flights of a single booster and engine, all of which performed powered vertical landings on Earth.” Although Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was first to guide a boost […]

With four months to go until AirVenture 2017, EAA announced this week that Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt of Apollo 17 joined a list of five other previously confirmed Apollo astronauts who will attend AirVenture to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the program. “This will be a rare, unforgettable gathering of […]

Russian adventurer Fedor Konyukhov, who last year flew around the world solo in a gas balloon, setting a new speed record, now is working on a plan to build the biggest-ever hot-air balloon and fly it to a record-setting altitude of 82,000 feet. The balloon envelope, to be built by Cameron Balloons in the United […]