Slamming into the atmosphere at more than 30 times the speed of sound, NASA’s Orion spacecraft blazed a trail over the Pacific Ocean on Friday, returning home with four astronauts and safely capping humanity’s first voyage to the Moon in nearly 54 years. Temperatures outside the capsule built up to some 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as ..
Tag : space
NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, also had questions when he took the job in December 2025. But in January, after a review, Isaacman announced he had “full confidence” in Orion’s heat shield using the new entry profile. He invited Ars Technica to Washington, DC, to sit in on a technical briefing at the time. From this ..
Accumulating a lot of experience … Booster 1076 entered the SpaceX fleet in 2021 and since then has launched missions including CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat Hotbird 13G, SES O3B mPOWER-A, PSN Satria, Telkomsat Merah Putih 2, Galileo L13, Koreasat-6A Crew-6, and USSF-124, plus 22 batches of Starlink satellites. (submitted by EllPeaTea) Atlas ..
NASA’s schedule currently puts the launch of Artemis III in 2027 and Artemis IV in 2028. Kshatriya said he was confident that NASA, working with the European Space Agency and Airbus, which builds the service module, will be able to fix the valve problem in time for Artemis IV. Manufacturing of the Artemis IV service ..
“We have loved living in Orion,” said Christina Koch, mission specialist on Artemis II. “In fact, we’ve all said that sometimes you can forget where you really are, because we’re in this small space that just gives us everything we need.” Living in microgravity makes the cramped quarters seem a little more accommodating. The astronauts ..
The eclipse glasses are identical to what NASA produced for the 2024 total solar eclipse. Credit: NASA The eclipse glasses are identical to what NASA produced for the 2024 total solar eclipse. Credit: NASA During their flyby of the Moon, the spacecraft got to within 4,067 miles (6,545 km) of the Moon’s surface. The Artemis ..
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—The first time NASA launched humans toward the Moon, in December 1968, the United States was a deeply fractured nation. The historic flight of three people into the unknown brought a measure of solace to a country riven by assassinations, riots, political discord, and a deeply unpopular foreign war. If history does ..
Apple invested $1.5 billion in Globalstar in 2024, taking a 20 percent stake in the company. As part of the agreement, Globalstar agreed to reserve 85 percent of its network capacity for the iPhone maker for satellite-based texting when outside cellular tower coverage. Bloomberg reported in October that Globalstar was exploring a sale and had ..
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—Three Americans and one Canadian launched into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday, flying the most powerful rocket ridden by humans on the first leg of a nine-day voyage around the Moon. Perched atop the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket, the four astronauts lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center ..
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—Launching to the Moon is an all-day undertaking, something the four astronauts waiting to climb aboard NASA’s Artemis II rocket know well. “It is actually a very long day,” said Victor Glover, the pilot on Artemis II. “We wake up about eight hours before launch, and there’s a pretty tight schedule of ..
