Solar Orbiter Launch Successful

An Atlas V 411 rocket carrying ESA’s new Sun-exploring Solar Orbiter flawlessly lifted off at 11:03 pm EST from Kennedy Space Center Sunday Night. The sophisticated spacecraft, equipped with a set of instruments for imaging the surface of our parent star and measuring the properties of the environment in its vicinity, will make a closer […]

Atlas V 411 Solar Orbiter Liftoff

The Solar Orbiter is a joint ESA/NASA mission dedicated to solar and heliospheric physics. It will be used to examine how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, the vast bubble of charged particles blown by the solar wind into the interstellar medium. The spacecraft will combine in situ and remote sensing observations to gain […]

Cygnus Launch Scrubbed

NASA and its private-sector partner Northrup Grumman were expecting to launch the Antares rocket on Sunday at roughly 5:39 p.m, however the launch has been scrubbed. The Antares rocket will be carrying the Cygnus spacecraft, which will be delivering roughly 8,000 pounds of cargo including supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. No new […]

Space double-header tonight! You can watch a Cygnus cargo ship and Solar Orbiter launch live online

The Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule headed to the International Space Station on Feb. 9, 2020, was raised to vertical position on a launchpad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (Image: © NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — There’s a space double feature in store for rocket fans today, with two launches to some […]

NASA’s experimental X-59 supersonic jet could be built by the end of 2020

NASA’s new experimental supersonic X-plane is on a fast track to flying. The plane, officially named X-59 QueSST in 2018 and often referred to as just X-59, was greenlit for final assembly during a critical design review in 2019. With this plane, NASA aims to create an ultraquiet craft that can travel over land faster than the speed of […]

SpaceX is holding a Starship career day to ramp up its Mars colonization effort

SpaceX wants to put the pedal to the metal on its Starship Mars colonization system. The company is hosting a Starship career day today (Feb. 6) at its facility near the South Texas village of Boca Chica, where the big spaceship is coming together. “This is mainly for staffing up 4 production shifts for 24/7 […]

Media invited to Speak with Record-Breaking NASA Astronaut Christina Koch

NASA astronaut Christina Koch will participate in a postflight news conference at 3:30 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 12, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The 30-minute news conference will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. This will be Koch’s first news conference after returning to Earth from a 328-day mission aboard […]

NASA astronaut's husband excited for wife's return to Galveston

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) –Christina Koch is back on Earth after being gone for nearly 11 months. The NASA astronaut and Galveston resident took a spaceflight of 328 days, which is more time than any other American female in history. Hours after she landed, she posted on social media, saying, “This journey has been everyone’s journey. […]

A Long-Standing Mystery About Mars’ South Pole Might Be Solved at Last

Scientists have donned their Sherlock Holmes caps to solve a mystery that’s been running for decades – the origins of a huge, layered expanse of CO2 ice and water ice at the south pole of Mars, and its link to the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere. One leading hypothesis is that these layers were packed on top […]

New Mission Will Take 1st Peek at Sun’s Poles

Jan. 27, 2020 New Mission Will Take 1st Peek at Sun’s Poles Animation of a portion of Solar Orbiter’s highly inclined orbit. Credits: ESA/ATG medialab A simulation of a solar eruption hitting Earth’s magnetic field. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/Community-Coordinated Modeling Center Download high-res file A new spacecraft is journeying to the […]