Washington DC (UPI) Jul 15, 2021
Lockheed Martin opened a new spacecraft facility Thursday to help build NASA's Orion lunar capsules near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Lockheed Martin says the new STAR Center in Titusville is now a "digitally transformed factory of the future" that will help produce spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon. STAR stands for Spacecraft Test, Assembly and Resource. "This repres

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 16, 2021
Richard Branson won the billionaire space race this week when he boarded his Virgin Galactic spacecraft and became the first "space tourist" for a few minutes. He got there ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is to take off in his Blue Origin rocket next week. Of course, American firms aren't the only ones heading into space. In recent months, China's national space program has landed r

Moscow (Sputnik) Jul 15, 2021
During the Cold War, the US tested a slew of anti-satellite weapons, including detonating a nuclear weapon in space, which damaged a Soviet satellite. However, only recently has Washington worried that space was becoming militarized - now that other nations are developing similar capabilities. On Tuesday, Germany became the latest NATO power to inaugurate a separate space command, followin

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 15, 2021
Engineers at NASA have identified the potential cause of a payload computer problem that has sidelined the Hubble Space Telescope for more than a month. The agency said Thursday it would start a process to switch to a backup system, and that the telescope could be back to normal operations within a few days. The payload computer, part of Hubble's Science Instrument Command and Da

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 16, 2021
By listening to the rain of electrons flowing onto Jupiter from its intensely volcanic moon Io, researchers using NASA's Juno spacecraft have found what triggers the powerful radio emissions within the monster planet's gigantic magnetic field. The new result sheds light on the behavior of the enormous magnetic fields generated by gas-giant planets like Jupiter. Jupiter has the largest, mos

Beijing (XNA) Jul 16, 2021
The China National Space Administration published on Thursday three pictures taken recently by its Zhurong Mars rover that showed the parachute and bowl-shaped back shell used in the rover's landing. The pictures - one color and two black-and-white - were shot by Zhurong's navigation camera on Monday as the rover was traveling southward for its scientific exploration, the administration sa

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 15, 2021
As the Mars helicopter Ingenuity breaks interplanetary records and captures the public's attention, NASA is quietly researching a bigger, better Mars chopper to navigate the Red Planet's rough terrain. The next aircraft sent to Mars has no budget, no confirmed design and no launch date, but researchers at NASA and various universities have studied possible destinations for such a missio

Week in images: 12 - 16 July 2021

Discover our week through the lens

A year ago tomorrow, a failure on the Integral spacecraft meant it fired its thrusters for likely the last time. In the days since, the spacecraft in Earth orbit has continued to shed light on the violent gamma ray Universe, and it should soon be working even more efficiently than before, as mission control teams implement an ingenious new way to control the 18-year-old spacecraft.

Image: Record rainfall has caused swollen rivers to burst their banks and wash away homes and other buildings in western Europe. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission are being used to map flooded areas to help relief efforts.