Tag Archives: Spacecraft

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A comet from another star system will swing by Mars on Friday as a fleet of spacecraft trains its sights on the interstellar visitor. The comet known as 3I/Atlas will hurtle within 18 million miles (29 million kilometers) of the red planet, its closest approach during its trek through the inner solar system. Its breakneck speed: …

Get ready for the ultimate road trip with no return ticket. Engineers and architects have unveiled a concept for a colossal spacecraft named Chrysalis, designed to be a self-sustaining world on a one-way voyage to Alpha Centauri. This is the closest star system to Earth, and it also contains the famous Proxima Centauri, the …

A Russian satellite crash landed in a field south west of Moscow earlier this month while carrying some unusual cargo: about 1,500 flies, 75 mice, seeds, a bunch of microbes, and various cell tissues. The Bion-M No 2 satellite’s mission was to study the impact of space on these critters, but to also test the wild concept — a theory …

Mars’ atmosphere has been of interest to scientists for decades, especially as humanity looks to set up outposts on the Red Planet. Recently, the European Space Agency‘s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter gave us a more detailed look at the thin shell of air that sits above the limb of Mars What is it? Creating a composite photograph of the images …

A private company will give a powerful NASA space telescope a new lease on life next year, if all goes according to plan. Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies has scored a contract to raise the altitude of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has been hunting for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from low Earth orbit (LEO) for more than two decades. Sparse …

Lee este comunicado de prensa en español aquí. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched three new missions Wednesday to investigate the Sun’s influence across the solar system. At 7:30 a.m. EDT, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying the agency’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration …

The spacecraft that will carry astronauts to lunar realms for the first time in more than half a century now has a name. The four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, who could launch on their trip around the moon as early as Feb. 5, announced today (Sept. 24) that they have named their Orion capsule “Integrity.” “The name Integrity …

Driving rapid innovation in the American space industry, NASA has awarded Katalyst Space Technologies of Flagstaff, Arizona, a contract to raise a spacecraft’s orbit. Katalyst’s robotic servicing spacecraft will rendezvous with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and raise it to a higher altitude, demonstrating a key capability for the future of space exploration and extending the Swift mission’s science lifetime. …

Stations on planet Earth have sent and received messages beamed via laser from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft over 350 million kilometers (218 million miles) away. This breakthrough in optical communication shows that NASA is laying the groundwork for high-speed data links for future human missions to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology has recently demonstrated that data encoded in lasers …

A pair of spacecraft have arrived in Florida ahead of their launch on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket and a voyage to the Red Planet. Launch and space systems company Rocket Lab delivered the twin ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”) spacecraft to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday (Sept. 22). The twin probes, named Blue and …