Copernical Team
China tests new Tianzhou fuel cell on route to Tiangong Station
China has carried out an in-orbit test of its domestically developed space-based fuel cell, according to the China Academy of Space Technology. The academy, part of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, said the cell worked well in environments characterized by vacuums, extreme low temperature and microgravity during the test that took place recently outside the Tianzhou 5 cargo spaceship China offers intl cooperation opportunity via Chang'e lunar missions
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Thursday revealed the international payloads that will piggyback on the Chang'e 6 lunar exploration mission, and announced another call for international payload proposals for the Chang'e 7 mission.
The CNSA has announced that it will carry scientific instruments from France, Italy and the European Space Agency/Sweden on the Chang'e 6 missi Japan space agency says research team tampered with ISS experiment
Japan's space agency said Friday that a research team had tampered with data from an experiment simulating life on the International Space Station.
The team, headed by astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, will be "appropriately" punished because he had a supervisory role in the experiment, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said.
The experiments occurred in 2016 and 2017 and inv Orion surpasses Apollo 13 record distance from Earth: Flight Day 11
On day 11 of the Artemis I mission, Orion continues its journey beyond the Moon after entering a distant retrograde orbit Friday, Nov. 25, at 3:52 p.m. CST. Orion will remain in this orbit for six days before exiting lunar orbit to put the spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth and f a Sunday, Dec. 11, splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission wit NASA Orion spacecraft enters lunar orbit: officials
NASA's Orion spacecraft was placed in lunar orbit Friday, officials said, as the much-delayed Moon mission proceeded successfully.
A little over a week after the spacecraft blasted off from Florida bound for the Moon, flight controllers "successfully performed a burn to insert Orion into a distant retrograde orbit," the US space agency said on its web site.
The spacecraft is to take astr SpaceX sends another Dragon full of cargo and science to ISS
SpaceX's 26th commercial resupply mission for NASA is on its way to the International Space Station.
Carrying more than 7,700 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and other cargo, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on the Falcon 9 rocket at 2:20 p.m. EST Saturday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The cargo spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously dock at the spa NASA's Orion capsule enters far-flung orbit around moon
'Good Night Oppy': Why this movie about a Martian robot will make you reach for your handkerchief
Get those Kleenex ready. You'll never again see robots as just lurching, whirring, beeping hunks of metal.
In 2003, the U.S. sent two rovers to explore Mars. The documentary "Good Night Oppy" (streaming now on Amazon Prime Video) revives that epic adventure, doing for gangly interstellar probes what the Oscar-winning 2020 doc "My Octopus Teacher" did for that tentacled sea creature: humanize them.
The two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, or Oppy, were built to last roughly 92 days. Spirit lasted six years. And Oppy rambled across 28 miles of the red planet for nearly 15 years, driving its way into the hearts of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists, who reveled in its triumphs and sweated its breakdowns. Think Pixar's "WALL-E" meets "Apollo 13."
USA TODAY spoke with "Oppy" director Ryan White and JPL engineering lead Doug Ellison about how this space adventure is really a love story.
The viral NASA tweet that started it all
Science documentaries don't typically tug at the heartstrings. But White says a 2019 viral tweet from NASA instantly convinced him and his production team that there was a very different story to tell.
King of rockets, NASA's SLS could soon be usurped by SpaceX's Starship
NASA's Space Launch System roared off the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center and into the record books, for now.
The SLS rocket, using a combination of two solid rocket boosters with a core stage consisting of four repurposed RS-25 engines from the space shuttle program, produced 8.8 million pounds of thrust to lift the Orion spacecraft into orbit and help send it on its way to the moon for the uncrewed Artemis I mission.
Its success makes it the most powerful rocket to ever blast into space, besting the power of the Saturn V rockets used during the Apollo moon missions five decades ago, which produced 7.5 million pounds of thrust.
The Soviet Union attempted to launch a rocket called the N-1 on four attempts from 1969-1972 that produced 10.2 million pounds of thrust, but they all failed midflight and never made it to space.
That makes SLS the space rocket king, and its performance was close to perfection, said NASA Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin.