A second fueling test on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket ended Thursday night, giving senior managers enough confidence to move forward with plans to launch four astronauts around the Moon as soon as March 6. Unlike the first attempt to load propellants into the SLS rocket on February 2, there were no major leaks during ..
Tag : space
Still, after astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams eventually docked at the station, Boeing officials declared success. “We accomplished a lot, and really more than expected,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, during a post-docking news conference. “We just had an outstanding day.” Over the subsequent weeks of the ..
Many European nations have their own satellite projects. Historically, their preference for launching on European rockets has not been as strong as it is for pan-European programs managed by ESA and the EU. So it has never been unusual to see a British, German, Spanish, or Italian satellite launching on a foreign rocket. This posture ..
Running solo After these astronauts departed on January 15, just a single NASA astronaut, Chris Williams, remained in orbit. He had reached space on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in November, alongside two Russian cosmonauts, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. The space station is a big place, and with much of the facility now more ..
John Honeycutt, chair of NASA’s Artemis II mission management team, said the decision to relax the safety limit between Artemis I and Artemis II was grounded in test data. “The SLS program, they came up with a test campaign that actually looked at that cavity, the characteristics of the cavity, the purge in the cavity ..
The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, does not often post on the social media site owned by his rival Elon Musk. But on Monday, Bezos did, sharing a black-and-white image of a turtle emerging from the shadows on X. The photo, which included no text, may have stumped some observers. Yet for anyone familiar with Bezos’ ..
Starship nearing next test flight. The upgraded Super Heavy booster slated to launch SpaceX’s next Starship flight has completed cryogenic proof testing, clearing a hurdle that resulted in the destruction of the company’s previous booster, Ars reports. The proof test is notable because it moves engineers closer to launching the first test flight of an ..
The Ariane 64 flew with an extended payload shroud to fit all 32 Amazon Leo satellites. Combined, the payload totaled around 20 metric tons, or about 44,000 pounds, according to Arianespace. This is close to maxing out the Ariane 64’s lift capability. Amazon has booked more than 100 missions across four launch providers to populate ..
Moments after liftoff from Florida’s Space Coast early Thursday morning, a shower of sparks emerged in the exhaust plume of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. Seconds later, the rocket twisted on its axis before recovering and continuing the climb into orbit with a batch of US military satellites. The sight may have appeared familiar to ..
Pad 40 has been the primary Falcon 9 launch site for most of the rocket’s history, while Pad 39A provided a location for crew launches and an augmentation to support SpaceX’s growing launch cadence. But there are signs the Falcon 9 launch cadence, which reached 165 missions last year, may be peaking as the company ..
