Washington DC (UPI) Jan 14, 2021
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, successfully launched and recovered a new capsule Thursday that includes new amenities for space tourists. The uncrewed flight lifted off at 12:19 p.m. EST from the company's Corn Ranch spaceport about 150 miles east of El Paso, Texas. About 11 minutes later, the booster and capsule had returned safely to the dusty West Texas soil.

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 15, 2021
The heat probe developed and built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and deployed on Mars by NASA's InSight lander has ended its portion of the mission. Since Feb. 28, 2019, the probe, called the "mole," has been attempting to burrow into the Martian surface to take the planet's internal temperature, providing details about the interior heat engine that drives the Mars' evolution and geology.

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Jan 15, 2021
The Orion spacecraft for NASA's Artemis I mission is taking one more step closer to its flight to the Moon. On Jan. 14, the spacecraft was lifted out of the stand in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida where engineers have meticulously outfitted it with thousands of components and tested its systems and subsystems to ensure it can a

Beijing (XNA) Jan 15, 2021
China has newly released four national technical standards for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), according to the China Satellite Navigation Office. This is a major move forward of China in standardizing and ensuring the development and industrial application of the BDS through drafting national standards, said the office. The four newly-released technical standards are f

Cleveland OH (SPX) Jan 15, 2021
NASA is developing capabilities that will allow missions at high altitudes to take advantage of signals from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constellations - like GPS commonly used in the U.S. These signals - used on Earth for navigation and critical timing applications - could provide NASA's Artemis missions to the Moon with reliable timing and navigation data. NASA's Space Communicat

Stevenage UK (SPX) Jan 15, 2021
Airbus has successfully completed the first key phase of the Skynet 6A project with the achievement of the Preliminary Design Review (PDR). The project now has permission to move into the next phase leading to the Critical Design Review (CDR). Airbus was awarded the Skynet 6A contract in July 2020 and teams across its sites in Stevenage, Portsmouth and Hawthorn have been working on the pro

Bethesda MD (SPX) Jan 15, 2021
Many think the idea of a military crewed space station is new. It is not. The Russian Almaz ("Diamond") was a highly secret Soviet military space station program that began in the early 1960s. In fact, three crewed military reconnaissance stations were launched between 1973 and 1976. These were referred to as Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5. To camouflage their real mission the three stati

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 15, 2021
Is our solar system located in a typical Milky Way neighborhood? Scientists have gotten closer to answering this question, thanks to the NASA-funded Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, a "citizen science" collaboration between professional scientists and members of the public. Scientists tapped into the worldwide network of 150,000 volunteers using Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 to find new exam

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company launched a new capsule into space Thursday to test all the astronaut perks before people strap in.

Thursday's flight with a dummy named Mannequin Skywalker lasted 10 minutes and reached 66 miles (106 kilometers) above West Texas. Both the New Shepard rocket and the capsule landed successfully.

It was the 14th flight to the fringes of space for a New Shepard rocket. The first was in 2015.

"The success of this flight puts us one really big step closer to flying astronauts," launch commentator Ariane Cornell said from company headquarters in Kent, Washington.