Spaceflight

With a $20 million X Prize in play, 16 private companies are vying to be the first to launch a mission to the Moon, and now one of the contenders, Moon Express, may be just weeks away from being the first to gain government approval for its plan. “Until now, only governments have undertaken space […]

Blue Origin LLC is ramping up its spaceflight programs, breaking ground for a rocket factory as it begins a new three-year launch contract under NASA. The Texas-based company is prepping for construction of an eight-story, 475,000-square-foot facility at Exploration Park, the industrial site at Kennedy Space Center, according to a Florida Today report this week. […]

An 18.8 million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon flown remotely by NASA has successfully completed a midlatitude circumnavigation of the Earth, NASA said today. The balloon, carrying a Compton spectrometer and imager payload, achieved the milestone 14 days, 13 hours, and 17 minutes after launching from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, on Tuesday, May 17. At the moment the […]

The Airbus Perlan Mission II team, which aims to fly a pressurized glider to a record of 90,000 feet, is continuing its flight-test program in Minden, Nevada. Airbus CEO Tom Enders visited the site last weekend, and went for a flight in the glider with the project’s chief pilot, Jim Payne. “Experiencing the Perlan 2 […]

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C., will stay open all night on Friday, July 1, to celebrate the building’s 40th year. The free event also will celebrate the opening of the newly redesigned Milestones of Flight Hall, where historic aircraft are on display, including the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell […]

Three aerospace teams will compete for a military contract to further develop their ideas for a reusable unmanned spaceplane that can make daily flights over a ten-day period. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced this week it will hold a publicProposers Day on April 29 to discuss the second and third phases of its […]

External Tank 94, a 69,000-pound artifact from NASA’s space shuttle program, is en route to a permanent home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The tank, which was one of 138 built at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, is the last of its kind. ET-94 left its storage site there this […]

SpaceX landed its unmanned rocket on a seaborne platform Friday, the first success after four failed attempts to get the rocket launched and then returned, unscathed, to a floating landing pad. The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral at 4:43 p.m. with the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, bound for the International Space Station. After […]

The NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Dawn Program Team is the winner of the 2015 Robert J. Collier Trophy, the National Aeronautic Association announced. The NAA‘s selection committee gathered this week to meet with the award’s nine nominees and announced the winner at its annual spring event in Arlington, Virginia.The NASA/JPL team won for its “extraordinary achievements […]

Only one person on Earth can claim the title “The Last Man on the Moon,” and a new documentary film by that name takes a look at how Gene Cernan has been affected by his spaceflight experience. Cernan, 81, worked with independent filmmakers Mark Craig and Mark Stewart, from the UK. Craig “deftly creates a […]