Exploring The Frontier Of Space
Using existing and in development technologies provides the head start needed to meet NASA’s goal of landing at the South Pole of the Moon. Lockheed Martin’s Ascent Element is based on Orion; Northrop Grumman’s Transfer Element is based on Cygnus; and Blue Origin’s Descent Element is based on the Blue Moon lander and BE-7 engine, […]
You know the feeling of pride and achievement when you’ve worked really hard on a term paper, and finally turn it in? That’s how the critical design review team for NASA’s Space Launch System is feeling this week as the program completed its review. The in-depth review – the first in almost 40 years for […]
ISS One-Year Mission Expedition 43 Soyuz TMA-16M Launch Coverage NASA TV A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off for the International Space Station today. Their launch wasn’t historic in its own right. After all, the three are members of the 43rd expeditionary crew to live aboard the outpoust. What is groundbreaking is the […]
NASA is making steady progress on its Orion spacecraft, completing several milestones this week at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for the capsule’s first trip to space in December. Engineers finished building the Orion crew module, attached it and the already-completed service module to the adapter that will join Orion to its […]
When NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Earth on Oct. 9, 2013, it received a boost in speed of more than 8,800 mph (about 3.9 kilometers per second), which set it on course for a July 4, 2016, rendezvous with Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. One of Juno’s sensors, a special kind of […]
A Long March 3B rocket blasted off from the mountains of southern China today, carrying with it the first spacecraft intended to land on the Moon since 1976 (the Soviet Union’s Luna 24). Nestled inside the Chang’e 3 spacecraft is a 260 pound rover named Yutu, China’s first land-mobile explorer. Chang’e 3 follows the country’s […]
During the NASA shutdown, the LADEE mission continued to perform its critical maneuvers and capture into the commissioning orbit around the moon. The trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-1) was completed on Oct. 1, and set the spacecraft to rendezvous with the moon on Oct. 6.
The Mighty Eagle, a NASA robotic prototype lander managed out of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. successfully completed a test flight today as part of a series to help validate software from Moon Express, Inc. The flight also evaluated a new hazard avoidance system designed and developed at the Marshall Center. Like […]
In an attempt to answer prevailing questions about our moon, NASA is making final preparations to launch a probe at 11:27 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 6, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. The small car-sized Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to […]