L3Harris Completes Final US Missile Defense Agency Satellite Design Milestone
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52L3Harris Technologies has completed the final major design milestone on the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) program Phase IIb On-orbit Prototype Demonstration and has already begun building the demonstration satellite. Completing the CDR is the final design milestone ensuring performance, cost and schedule requirements can be met b
Ball Aerospace-built optics and mirror system launched aboard Webb Telescope
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52Ball Aerospace is celebrating the launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) from French Guiana. The Colorado-based company designed and built the advanced optical technology and lightweight mirror system that will enable Webb to detect light from the first stars and galaxies. "It is truly an honor to be such an integral part of the next great space observatory," said Dr. Makenzie
NASA, private space industry may reach new heights in 2022
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52Space exploration may shatter records in 2022 with the launch of the most powerful rocket ever in a flight beyond the moon, a space telescope that will peer into the dawn of the universe and groundbreaking science on Mars. The New Year also may see SpaceX's deep space Starship rocket fly above the atmosphere, expansion of space tourism and new rocket launches from companies such as United
Scientists at PPPL and Princeton University demonstrate a novel rocket for deep-space exploration
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have now developed a tiny modified version of a plasma-based propulsion system called a Hall thruster that both increases the lifetime of the rocket and pro
Virgin Orbit completes final launch rehearsal ahead of 3rd commercial launch
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52Yesterday, Virgin Orbit, which has announced a planned business combination with NextGen Acquisition Corp. II ("NextGen") (NASDAQ: NGCA), completed a full wet dress rehearsal of its air-launched LauncherOne satellite delivery service, taking the integrated system through a full run of procedures to verify the health of the system and the preparedness of the team. "The successful completion
World's most sophisticated commercial communications satellite launched
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52Inmarsat, the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications confirms the successful launch of its first Inmarsat-6 satellite, I-6 F1, by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) from the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. The Inmarsat-6s (I-6) are Inmarsat's first ever hybrid L- and Ka-band satellites, incorporating increased capacity and new technological advances for ELERA's tran
Cargo Dragon Docks to Station with Brand New Science
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52While the International Space Station was traveling more than 260 miles over the South Pacific Ocean, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft autonomously docked to the space-facing side of the orbiting laboratory's Harmony module at 3:41 a.m. EST, Wednesday, Dec. 22. NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn were monitoring docking operations for Dragon. The Dragon launched on SpaceX's 24t
Perseverance and the Search Amongst the Sand
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52Since February 18, 2021, Perseverance has been exploring the Jezero crater floor, including an exposure of rock and sand that the rover's science team calls Seitah (which means "amongst the sand" in the Navajo language). One of the main exploration targets within Jezero crater is the well-preserved delta deposit, and many of the predicted landing sites for the rover were clustered very nea
Holiday Prepping on Mar: Sols 3333-3343
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52On Mars, like Earth, we are prepping for the holidays. Today we planned an eleven sol plan which will take us to the end of December. For this plan, the ENV instruments take the main stage, with lots of REMS activities and a rare day-long DAN passive experiment. With such a long complex plan, contact science had to be short and sweet today. This current location is dotted with large nodula
DART returns first images from space
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52Just two weeks after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has opened its "eye" and returned its first images from space - a major operational milestone for the spacecraft and DART team. After the violent vibrations of launch and the extreme temperature shift to minus 80 degrees C in space, scientists and enginee
China's tallest rocket deploys two satellites
Monday, 27 December 2021 08:52The launch of a modified Long March 7A carrier rocket on Thursday that sent two experimental satellites into space marked the debut mission of China's tallest rocket. The 60.7-meter-tall rocket blasted off at 6:12 pm from a coastal launch tower at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province before placing the Shiyan 12-01 and 12-02 satellites into their orbits, China Aerospace Scie
99 objects telling tales from ESA’s technical heart
Monday, 27 December 2021 07:38From simulated moondust to an ultraflat floor, a 3D-printed human bone to a wall decoration that once flew on the Hubble Space Telescope, the new 99 Objects of ESA ESTEC website gives visitors a close-up view of intriguing, often surprising artefacts assembled together to tell the story of ESA’s technical heart.
Chinese astronaut pair complete six-hour spacewalk
Sunday, 26 December 2021 22:41Two Shenzhou-13 astronauts embarked on a six-hour extravehicular activity Sunday to install equipment outside China’s Tianhe space station module.
Webb launch campaign highlights
Sunday, 26 December 2021 14:00Highlights of the launch campaign for the James Webb Space Telescope, from its arrival at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, weeks of launch preparations, to launch on board an Ariane 5, and separation of the spacecraft and solar panel deployment.
Now in space and on its way to L2, Webb will undergo a complex unfolding sequence. In the months after, the instruments will be turned on and their capabilities tested. After half a year in space, Webb will start its routine science observations.
Webb will see farther into our origins: from the Universe's first galaxies, to the birth
James Webb telescope sets off on million-mile voyage
Saturday, 25 December 2021 19:31The world's most powerful space telescope on Saturday blasted off into orbit, headed to an outpost 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth, after several delays caused by technical hitches. The James Webb Space Telescope, some three decades and billions of dollars in the making, left Earth enclosed in its Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana. "What an amazi