Downrange weather delays Crew-2 launch
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 18:00
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA has delayed the scheduled April 22 launch of the Crew-2 commercial crew mission by a day because of weather not at the launch site but at potential abort locations in the Atlantic Ocean.
Optical imagery-focused EarthDaily Analytics emerges from UrtheCast
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 17:19 Write a comment
TAMPA, Fla. — Private equity firm Antarctica Capital has formed a Canadian optical satellite imagery provider called EarthDaily Analytics, after buying parts of UrtheCast that sought creditor protection last year to avoid bankruptcy.
A company official for New York-based Antarctica Capital, which manages more than $2 billion of assets, told SpaceNews it is in talks about buying other businesses in complementary areas.
Scientists find carbon-rich liquid water in ancient meteorite
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 17:00 Write a comment
Space Force pushing procurement reforms but culture change is a slow go
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 16:22 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The Space Force is standing up a new procurement organization and taking other actions to speed up acquisitions of cutting-edge technology from the commercial space industry. But change won’t happen overnight due to the military’s deeply ingrained culture, said Gen.
Op-ed | Conjunction risk drives need for information sharing
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 14:45 Write a comment
The recent announcement that NASA has entered into discussions with China’s space agency over the sharing of ephemeris data for Mars orbital conjunction analysis is certainly positive and necessary.
SpaceX flight to ISS postponed by one day due to weather
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 13:33 Write a comment
A crewed SpaceX mission to the International Space Station has been postponed by a day due to weather concerns downrange of the launch site, NASA said Wednesday.
Liftoff had been scheduled for Thursday but because of unfavorable conditions along the Atlantic coast, it will now be set for 5:49 am (0949 GMT) Friday.
"For crewed missions we need to look downrange to make sure weather's good for a potential launch escape, and for recovery of the crew," acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk told reporters.
The Crew-2 mission will carry four astronauts in the second routine taxi ride by SpaceX to ISS since the United States resumed crewed space flight, and the first with a European.
SpaceX flight to ISS postponed by one day due to weather: NASA
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 13:08 Write a comment
A crewed SpaceX mission to the International Space Station has been postponed by a day due to concerns over the weather, NASA said Wednesday.
The flight had been scheduled for Thursday but because of an unfavorable weather forecast along the flight path it will now be set for 5:49 am (0949 GMT) Friday, the US space agency said.
A SpaceX rocket is to carry four astronauts to the ISS in th 23 April: watch Mission Alpha launch live
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 11:30 Write a comment
Latest: NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 23 April at 10:49 BST (11:49 CEST) for the launch of the Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station due to unfavourable weather conditions along the flight path on Thursday.
French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.
24 April: watch Mission Alpha docking live
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 11:30 Write a comment
French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, saw the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.
NASA's NICER probes the squeezability of neutron stars
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 10:49 Write a comment
Matter in the hearts of neutron stars—dense remnants of exploded massive stars—takes the most extreme form we can measure. Now, thanks to data from NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, scientists have discovered that this mysterious matter is less squeezable than some physicists predicted.
The finding is based on NICER's observations of PSR J0740+6620 (J0740 for short), the most massive known neutron star, which lies over 3,600 light-years away in the northern constellation Camelopardalis. J0740 is in a binary star system with a white dwarf, the cooling remnant of a Sun-like star, and rotates 346 times per second. Previous observations place the neutron star's mass at about 2.1 times the Sun's.
"We're surrounded by normal matter, the stuff of our everyday experience, but there's much we don't know about how matter behaves, and how it is transformed, under extreme conditions," said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Hide and seek: How NASA's Lucy mission team discovered Eurybates' satellite
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 10:49 Write a comment
On Jan. 9, 2020, NASA's Lucy mission officially announced that it would be visiting not seven, but eight asteroids. As it turns out, Eurybates, one of the asteroids along Lucy's path, has a small satellite.
Though searching for satellites is one of the mission's central goals, finding these tiny worlds before Lucy is launched gives the team the opportunity to investigate their orbits and plan for more detailed follow-up observations with the spacecraft.
China is developing plans for a 13,000-satellite megaconstellation
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 09:46 Write a comment
HELSINKI — China is to oversee the construction and operation of a national satellite internet megaconstellation through coordinating the country’s major space actors.
Recent comments by senior officials indicate that plans are moving ahead to alter earlier constellation plans by space sector state-owned enterprises and possibly make these part of a larger “Guowang” or “national network” satellite internet project.
Arrival of world-first test facility
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 09:39 Write a comment
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Arrival of world-first test facility 
20 years of Europeans on the Space Station
Wednesday, 21 April 2021 08:57 Write a comment
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20 years of Europeans on the Space Station