NASA selects SpaceX to develop crewed lunar lander
Friday, 16 April 2021 21:35
WASHINGTON — NASA has selected SpaceX as the sole company to win a contract to develop and demonstrate a crewed lunar lander, while keeping the door open for others to compete for future missions.
NASA announced April 16 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for Option A of the Human Landing System (HLS) program, which covers development of a crewed lunar lander and a demonstration mission.
Larger late-stage deals dominating space investment landscape
Friday, 16 April 2021 21:25
TAMPA, Fla. — Private investors deployed another $1.9 billion in SpaceX, OneWeb and other space infrastructure companies in the first three months of 2021, according to data from New York-based Space Capital.
The company, which invests in early-stage ventures in addition to providing market intelligence, includes rocket and satellite builders in how it defines space infrastructure.
SpaceX's next crew arrives in Florida for Earth Day launch
Friday, 16 April 2021 20:08
SpaceX's most international crew of astronauts yet arrived at their launch site Friday.
By coincidence, their flight to the International Space Station is set for next Thursday—Earth Day. It's a reminder of NASA's core mission of studying the home planet, the space agency's acting administrator Steve Jurczyk said as he welcomed the astronauts to Kennedy Space Center.
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Alpha poster Analysts: China’s space programs are a security concern to the U.S. but not all are nefarious
Friday, 16 April 2021 18:46
WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community in a report listed China’s space program as a top security concern for the United States. Some space experts and analysts criticized the report for painting China’s space program with a broad brush and failing to draw distinctions between civilian and military space pursuits.
White House nominates Melroy to be NASA deputy administrator
Friday, 16 April 2021 18:43
WASHINGTON — The White House announced April 16 it will nominate former astronaut Pam Melroy to be NASA’s deputy administrator.
Melroy’s nomination was one of eight the White House announced to fill positions across the government. The position will require confirmation by the Senate.
Astronaut selection: tips from Thomas
Friday, 16 April 2021 13:30
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In 2008, Thomas Pesquet applied to become an ESA astronaut. On 22 April 2021, he will fly his second mission to the International Space Station. In this video Thomas shares how he found his way to space, and encourages viewers to follow their passions as ESA seeks its next class of astronauts.
Nobody is perfect on their first attempt at a task, but Thomas says the only way to improve is to try and keep trying. Though becoming an astronaut seemed a distant dream when he was younger, by continuing to challenge himself and learn along the way
Week in images: 12 - 16 April 2021
Friday, 16 April 2021 12:19
Week in images: 12 - 16 April 2021
Discover our week through the lens
NASA rocket to survey the solar system's windshield
Friday, 16 April 2021 11:42
Eleven billion miles away—more than four times the distance from us to Pluto—lies the boundary of our solar system's magnetic bubble, the heliopause. Here the Sun's magnetic field, stretching through space like an invisible cobweb, fizzles to nothing. Interstellar space begins.
"It's really the largest boundary of its kind we can study," said Walt Harris, space physicist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
We still know little about what lies beyond this boundary. Fortunately, bits of interstellar space can come to us, passing right through this border and making their way into the solar system.
A new NASA mission will study light from interstellar particles that have drifted into our solar system to learn about the closest reaches of interstellar space.
New Tactical ISR Satellites Provide Global, Persistent Support For Warfighters
Friday, 16 April 2021 11:19
Lockheed Martin is addressing the accelerating demand for space-enabled warfighting capabilities with a new line of rapid, integrated and affordable tactical Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) satellites.
These satellites, based on Lockheed Martin's LM 400 mid-size bus, enable tactical warfighters to track moving targets at long ranges and operate in contested and denied e Fast-spinning black holes narrow the search for dark matter particles
Friday, 16 April 2021 11:19
Ultralight bosons are hypothetical particles whose mass is predicted to be less than a billionth the mass of an electron. They interact relatively little with their surroundings and have thus far eluded searches to confirm their existence. If they exist, ultralight bosons such as axions would likely be a form of dark matter, the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 85 percent of the matter Astronauts need a fridge
Friday, 16 April 2021 11:19
For astronauts to go on long missions to the moon or Mars, they need a refrigerator. But today's fridges aren't designed to work in zero gravity - or upside down if oriented that way when a spacecraft lands on another planet.
A team of engineers from Purdue University, Air Squared Inc., and Whirlpool Corporation is working on building a fridge for zero gravity that operates in different or China to launch a pair of spacecraft towards the edge of the solar system
Friday, 16 April 2021 11:07
HELSINKI — China is developing a mission to send a pair of spacecraft to study the far reaches of the solar system and reach interstellar space by mid-century.
NASA approves plans for Crew-2 launch
Friday, 16 April 2021 10:41
WASHINGTON — NASA managers approved plans to launch a SpaceX commercial crew mission to the International Space Station next week, pending the resolution of one minor issue with the Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA officials said April 15 that, after the completion of a flight readiness review, they approved plans for the launch April 22 of the Crew-2 mission, which will transport American, European and Japanese astronauts to the station on a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
La Soufrière volcano: before-and-after
Friday, 16 April 2021 10:30
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False-colour images captured by Copernicus Sentinel-2 show the aftermath of the explosive volcanic eruption that took place on 9 April 2021 on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent.