Spaceflight

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time on Friday evening. The uncrewed mission, Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), launched from Space Launch Complex-41 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday. As previously reported by AVweb, OFT-2 was originally expected to launch last year but […]

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, setting a new record for the longest single spaceflight in history by an American. Vande Hei launched on April 9, 2021, for a mission total of 355 days, 15 days longer than the previous record. According to NASA, he completed approximately […]

NASA has officially extended flight operations for its Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, through September, according to an announcement from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Tuesday. Ingenuity, which travelled to Mars onboard the Perseverance rover, recently completed its 21st successful flight. The rotorcraft’s future flights will focus on supporting Perseverance as it explores the Jezero […]

NASA has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to build a lightweight rocket designed to carry samples from the surface of Mars back Earth. The Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will be part of the NASA’s Mars Sample Return program, which is working to retrieve rock, sediment and atmospheric samples collected by the agency’s Perseverance rover. If […]

NASA announced Wednesday that its Ingenuity Mars helicopter reached a total flight time of 30 minutes during its 17th flight on Dec. 5. The 117-second trip brought the total time in the air logged by the rotorcraft to 30 minutes and 48 seconds. As previously reported by AVweb, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to operate […]

NASA has chosen ten candidates for its 2021 astronaut class, the agency announced on Monday during an event at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. Selected from among more than 12,000 applicants, the candidates are the agency’s first new astronaut class in four years. They are scheduled to report to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to begin […]

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a contract to build boosters for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Booster Production and Operations Contract (BPOC), which is valued at $3.19 billion, will support nine SLS flights through Dec. 31, 2031. Along with support for NASA’s first three Artemis missions, for which Northrop Grumman has already produced […]

NASA is pushing its plans for a crewed mission to the Moon back until at least 2025, the agency announced in an update on its Artemis program on Tuesday. Originally aiming to land “the first woman and next man” on the Moon in 2024, the Artemis team still needs to complete a planned uncrewed mission […]

NASA and Boeing have announced that the next launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been pushed back to next year while the company works to correct an oxidizer isolation valve issue on the vehicle’s service module propulsion system. The problem was discovered last August when unexpected valve position indications caused the cancellation of an uncrewed […]

NASA has reassigned astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada from missions aboard Boeing’s Starliner to the SpaceX Crew-5 launch. Mann was previously assigned to NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test while Cassada was scheduled for the Starliner-1 mission. NASA noted that the change was made “to allow Boeing time to complete the development of Starliner while […]