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When scientists send their spacecraft across the universe, they save fuel by performing “slingshot fly-bys”. This is where, rather than firing up the thrusters, the craft changes its trajectory by harnessing the enormous gravitational pull of a planet. However, this trick has had an unexpected side-effect: it seems to produce a change in speed that no one, since it was first discovered in the early 1990's, can account for. Experts are intrigued by the fact that while the acceleration is tiny and has no significant effect on NASA missions, it holds great interest because no explanation based on conventional physics...

Last month, the Boeing-designed X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle surpassed 800 days in space, eclipsing its previous endurance record. This feat was marked by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Delta 9, which operates the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. Designed as part of a pilot test program aimed at showcasing technologies for reusable unmanned space tests, the X-37B remains one of the most unique aircrafts in the U.S. arsenal. The U.S. Air Force has previously flown five X-37B missions, OTV-1 through OTV-5. The platform most recently launched to Earth orbit in May 2020 on its sixth mission for...

This week Firefly Aerospace signed a deal with Northrop Grumman to replace the first stage of the Antares rocket with the first stage of Firefly Beta, this will eliminate the dependence on Russian engines and bring the manufacturing of the major structural parts into the US.Firefly Will Replace Russian Engines On Antares Rocket With Beta Booster | August 11, 2022 | Scott Manley

“We got a fire in the cockpit,” Senior pilot Ed White called out at a little past 6:31 pm on Jan. 27, 1967. “We got a bad fire,” yelled pilot Roger Chaffee soon after. “We’re burning up!” The three-man crew of Apollo 1, including Commander Gus Grissom, were killed in a terrifying inferno that took their lives within seconds. Fifty-five years ago, the tragedy of Apollo 1 was a gut punch to the nation. Three helpless astronauts, tightly locked inside an Apollo capsule sitting atop a Saturn 1B rocket on Pad 34 down at the Cape in Florida, conducting a...

Buzz Aldrin is right – America’s civilian and national security depends on space exploration. To ensure this type of American exceptionalism continues into the future, we should follow the advice and guidance that he provided in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Now, Go Where No Man Has Gone Before” where he discusses the importance of space tourism and reasserting broader American leadership in space. We are making small steps, and now need to make bigger ones. In the past few weeks, America’s space leadership received a major boost with the successful launch, orbit, and safe return of civilians...

How does Blue Orgin continue to get government contracts while suing the government and publicly criticizing Artemis?ANGRY UPDATE!! Why is Blue Origin still getting government contracts? What about Artemis? | September 27, 2021 | The Angry Astronaut

Engineers have successfully shown how water and oxygen can be extracted by cooking up lunar soil, in order to support future Moon bases. A laboratory demonstrator, developed by a consortium of the Politecnico Milano, the European Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency and the OHB Group, is presented this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2021.... ...In the experimental set-up, the soil simulant is vaporized in the presence of hydrogen and methane, then "washed" with hydrogen gas. ...

In 2023, NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will land near the western edge of the Nobile Crater at the Moon’s South Pole to map and explore the region’s surface and subsurface for water and other resources. Part of Artemis, VIPER will launch on a SpaceX Falcon-Heavy rocket for delivery to the Moon by Astrobotic’s Griffin lander under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The Moon’s South Pole is one of the coldest areas in our solar system. No prior missions to the Moon’s surface have explored it – scientists have thus far only studied the region using remote...

Join us for the first live, on-orbit update from the Inspiration4 crew – the world’s first all-civilian human spaceflight to orbit!The Inspiration4 mission is part of Jared’s ambitious fundraising goal to give hope to all kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Visit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® to learn how you can help the Inspiration4 crew reach their $200M fundraising goal.During their multi-day journey in orbit, the Inspiration4 crew will conduct scientific research designed to advance human health on Earth and for future long-duration spaceflights.Inspiration4 | In-Flight Update with the Crew | Streamed live 5 hours ago | SpaceX

Perseverance's First Cored Mars Rock in Sample Tube: Perseverance’s first cored-rock sample is visible inside this titanium sample collection tube in this image taken on Sept. 6, 2021. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image and caption ›NASA’s Perseverance rover today completed the collection of the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil. Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California received data that confirmed the historic milestone. The core is now enclosed in an airtight titanium sample tube, making it available for retrieval in the future. Through the Mars Sample Return...

very 92.2 minutes, 400 kilometres in the sky, there is a Chinese Space Station circumnavigating the earth marking Beijing's challenge to US domination of space. Over the last two decades, China has been on an overdrive to catch up with and overtake every other space-faring nation, which has seriously alarmed strategists in Washington. The annual US national security report, released on April 9, 2021, devoted much space to how China is a threat to the US in space. The report said, Beijing is working to match or exceed US capabilities in space to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits...

The end of April saw the unfortunate passing of an incredible American hero – astronaut Michael Collins, who served our country with great honor and fine distinction for most of his adult life. On April 28th, Collins died at the age of 90 after a battle with cancer, the closing of a long, fruitful, and inspirational life of significant accomplishment and service to his country and humanity. Of course, Collins is best known as an astronaut, having flown the command module “Columbia” 30 times around the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Apollo 11 followed service in the...

The breakthrough was built on decades of research into a theoretical propulsion system called an oblique detonation wave engine (ODWE). The concept works by funneling a mixture of air and fuel at hypersonic speeds (more than five times the speed of sound) toward a ramp, which creates a shock wave. This shock wave rapidly heats up the fuel-air mixture and causes it to detonate, blasting exhaust gasses out from the back of the engine at high speed. In theory, this detonation should be able to propel an aircraft at up to 17 times the speed of sound, say the researchers,...

SpaceX's Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft, called Resilience, is scheduled to undock from the space station at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT) after delays due to bad weather at its splashdown site on Earth. The spacecraft will return NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi home after six months in space. You can watch SpaceX's Crew-1 Dragon undocking here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of NASA TV. NASA's livestream will begin at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) and will continue until splashdown, which is scheduled for Sunday at 2:57 a.m. EDT (0657...

The Ingenuity team has identified a software solution for the command sequence issue identified on Sol 49 (April 9) during a planned high-speed spin-up test of the helicopter’s rotors. Over the weekend, the team considered and tested multiple potential solutions to this issue, concluding that minor modification and reinstallation of Ingenuity’s flight control software is the most robust path forward. This software update will modify the process by which the two flight controllers boot up, allowing the hardware and software to safely transition to the flight state. Modifications to the flight software are being independently reviewed and validated today and...

This new research contract will see planetary scientists work together to explore the game-changing potential of nuclear power as a more plentiful source of energy, capable of making possible deeper space exploration in the decades to come. Nuclear propulsion, which would involve channelling the immense energy released in splitting the atom to accelerate propellants, like hydrogen, at huge speeds, has the potential to revolutionise space travel. By some estimates, this kind of engine could be twice as efficient as the chemical engines that power our rockets today. Spacecraft powered by this kind of engine could, conceivably, make it to Mars...

No, really. It has signed a contract to make this happen in 2025The European Space Agency has formalised its plan to dispose of space junk by using an orbiting claw to grab an old bit of rocket before dragging both the claw and the junk to a fiery doom.The agency announced the plan in late 2019 when it revealed it had asked Swiss startup ClearSpace to fully scope the mission.The paperwork was due in March and found favour with ESA's Ministerial Council, which has approved funding for an €86 million contract to fund the mission.The goal remains the same: fly...

Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies (USNC-Tech) has developed a concept for a new Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engine and delivered it to NASA. Claimed to be safer and more reliable than previous NTP designs and with far greater efficiency than a chemical rocket, the concept could help realize the goal of using nuclear propulsion to revolutionize deep space travel, reducing Earth-Mars travel time to just three months. Because chemical rockets are already near their theoretical limits and electric space propulsion systems have such low thrust, rocket engineers continue to seek ways to build more efficient, more powerful engines using some...

Two days after touching down on asteroid Bennu, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission team received on Thursday, Oct. 22, images that confirm the spacecraft has collected more than enough material to meet one of its main mission requirements -- acquiring at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of the asteroid's surface material.

"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," stated Astronaut Neil Armstrong, JULY 20, 1969, as he became the f irst man to walk on the moon, almost 238,900 miles away from the Earth. The second man on the moon was Colonel Buzz Aldrin, who described it as "magnificent desolation." Aldrin earned a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and helped develop the technology necessary for the mission, especially the complicated lunar module rendezvous with the command module. Buzz Aldrin's popularity was the inspiration for the character "Buzz Lightyear" in Pixar's animated movie Toy Story (1995). Buzz Aldrin shared a...