We’ve been waiting for the Quesst X-59 and the return of supersonic air travel for years now, and NASA’s latest update says things are moving along:
A Flight Readiness Review board composed of independent experts from across NASA has completed a study of the X-59 project team’s approach to safety for the public and staff during ground and flight testing.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is already running over budget and behind schedule. But it may also be our best chance of finding extraterrestrial life.
The Crew Flight Test was scrubbed Monday night just as the astronauts settled into position, but now NASA says the launch will be pushed back by a couple of weeks, at least.
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test now is targeted to launch no earlier than 6:16 p.m. EDT Friday, May 17, to the International Space Station. Following a thorough data review completed on Tuesday, ULA (United Launch Alliance) decided to replace a pressure regulation valve on the liquid oxygen tank on the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur upper stage.
The China National Space Administration released a video showing its concept for a future lunar base, which it says it will have set up by 2045, writes Space.
The China Global Television Network appears to have blurred out the Shuttle in the video on YouTube.
Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope recently produced the “sharpest infrared images to date” of the Horsehead Nebula, according to the European Space Agency.
As BBC Science Focus explains, images like this are made up of multiple composites taken at different infrared wavelengths, then shifted to the visible spectrum and combined.
NASA has finally found a fix after the 46-year-old space probe stopped sending readable data to Earth in November. Voyager 1 can only send information about its health and status for now, but NASA says it’s working to get it back to transmitting scientific data, too.
The spacecraft is being readied to carry astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station, with liftoff from Cape Canaveral scheduled for no earlier than 10:34PM ET.
The crew is expected to spend about a week at the orbiting laboratory before their capsule makes an airbag and parachute-assisted landing in the southwestern United States.
After making its final flight in January, NASA’s Mars helicopter has transmitted its last message to Earth and will now serve as a stationary testbed for collecting up to 20 years’ worth of data. Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s project manager, gave it this moving farewell:
“Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills — either with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts — Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data, a final testament to the reason we dare mighty things. Thank you, Ingenuity, for inspiring a small group of people to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds at the frontiers of space.”
The mission will launch “hopefully the first of May,” according to Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, who was joined by fellow astronaut Suni Williams during a NASA press conference yesterday.
NASA postponed the first crewed Starliner flight test last summer over safety concerns. When the mission launches, Wilmore and Williams will dock with the International Space Station for up to two weeks before returning to Earth.
BurstCube is aboard SpaceX’s Dragon resupply spacecraft, which launched on the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Thursday. After it arrives and is unpacked, the shoebox-sized CubeSat will be released into orbit, where it will locate and study gamma-ray bursts linked to the gravitational waves that were first detected in 2016.
You can see NASA’s simulation of the BurstCube below.
NASA’s Crew-8 mission, comprised of US astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, is set to fly to the International Space Station, where they’ll serve a six month stint as flight engineers.
Weather halted yesterday’s planned takeoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA writes on Crew-8’s mission blog that after launch, video coverage will stop until about 1AM ET on March 5th.
Varda Space Industries captured its W-1 capsule’s descent from low-earth orbit for the rest of us to watch in 4K on YouTube. Ars Technica has a thorough write-up about the mission.
Varda’s clip isn’t quite as dramatic as the 25-minute Artemis I reentry video you can download from NASA, but the clarity makes it a sight to behold.
During a NASA press conference Friday evening, Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus showed the attitude of its lunar lander, the first from the US to reach the Moon’s surface in over 50 years.
As Swapna Krishna explains, they believe it tipped over after catching a foot on the surface while landing, but fortunately, it’s still getting sunlight to power the battery. Plans for the coming days include deploying a CubeSat it’s carrying called EagleCam to take photos from the surface.
After a stressful few minutes of waiting beyond the estimated 6:24PM ET touchdown, the mission director said, “...we can confirm, without a doubt, our equipment is on the surface of the Moon, and we are transmitting.”
NASA engineers told Space that “effectively, the call between the spacecraft and the Earth was still connected” after its transmissions stopped making sense last year, “but Voyager’s ‘voice’ was replaced with a monotonous dial tone.”
The scientists are reportedly holding out hope they can fix it, but if they aren’t able to, that would leave Voyager 2 as humanity’s only still-communicating spacecraft in interstellar space.
After the sample was returned last year and NASA scientists went through some tribulation to break into the canister containing it, they say they gathered 121.6 grams of asteroid bits from Bennu.
NASA had hoped to gather at least 60 grams of material from the asteroid when its OSIRIS-REx mission craft punched its surface in 2020.
NASA released some captivating shots of Io, one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, from the Juno space probe. The spacecraft came within 930 miles of the moon’s surface on Saturday.
Io has roughly 400 active volcanoes and is the most volcanically active known body in the solar system. Scientific American noted that the volcanoes look like “dark pits” in the new images.
NASA’s Mars helicopter-that-could logged 67 more flights than the five it was originally intended to make in its almost three years on Mars before its little chopper blades gave out.
Gizmodo pointed to this lonesome digital zoom of the copter, resting on a sand dune on the red planet, created by visual design student Simeon Schmauß from a panorama he made from set of six NASA images (NASA later posted one of its own).
So long, Ingenuity. You did great, buddy.
NASA started its livestream at 11:30AM ET as its Juno spacecraft began flying by the volcanic moon. During the livestream, NASA has been answering viewer questions about the mission.
Sadly, it’s ending as I type this, but you can rewatch it here.
The US space agency published the below images (presented in a gallery) showing its appearance on the Moon, as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from roughly 50 miles above the surface on January 24th.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made Japan the fifth nation to make a soft landing on the Moon, although an unfortunate malfunction rendered it without power in a matter of hours.
The Ingenuity helicopter mission achieved powered flight on another world, brought Zigbee and Linux to Mars, and survived close calls, lasting 33 times longer than originally planned.
But on Thursday, NASA officials said that after a loss of communication and rough landing last week its rotor blades are too damaged to fly again. The Perseverance rover that brought it to Mars is too far away to get a picture, but this picture shows the shadow of a broken blade on the Mars terrain.
In 2004, NASA’s solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on the Red Planet’s surface on January 3rd and January 24th, respectively, with their touchdown softened by multiple bounces on giant airbags. Both rovers easily surpassed their three-month lifespan: Spirit lost contact in 2010, while Opportunity made it to 2019 — traveling 28 miles during its almost 15 years in operation.
Here’s NASA’s tribute to those very ambitious missions.
The agency was finally able to take a picture of the charcoal-like space gravel of the Bennu asteroid sample after getting the canister’s last two stubborn screws out.
The picture presented here is nowhere near as interesting as the detailed and very zoomable full-res download you can grab from NASA’s site, though.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) says it reestablished contact by having the Perseverance rover “perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.” The agency had lost contact with Ingenuity on Thursday, just as it was ending its 72nd Mars flight.
It’s good news for the bots, which are part of the Mars Sample Return mission that’s been beset by budget cuts and layoffs at JPL.
The Ingenuity helicopter, which has been fluttering around the red planet for almost three years now, fell out of contact with Perseverance, the rover that brought it to the planet (and that it communicates with using Zigbee!).
NASA wrote yesterday that the flight, its 72nd, was a test of its systems after it was forced to land it early during its previous flight. The agency is working toward reestablishing contact.
While we wait, here’s a recent video of the helicopter in action.
Astrobotic, the company that makes the lander, published an update Friday saying the lander had traversed 238,000 miles, putting it as far from the Earth as our Moon.
Peregrine’s post-launch propulsion malfunction means it’s not actually on the lunar surface as planned. Astrobotic wrote yesterday that the lander was “about 242,000 miles” out, and should return to “likely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
