Category Archives: NASA

Nasa to change ‘harmful’ and insensitive’ planet and galaxy nicknames

Posted on by

Space agency says ‘certain cosmic nicknames are insensitive’ and vows to drop any reference to them

Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects and systems such as planets, galaxies and nebulae.

In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”.

Continue reading...

Nasa astronauts aboard SpaceX capsule make first splashdown in 45 years

Posted on by

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley land off Florida after two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home in nine years

US astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.

Behnken and Hurley left the station on Saturday and returned home to land in the waves off Florida’s Pensacola coast on schedule at 2.48pm ET following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon “Endeavor.”

Continue reading...

Seeking life on Mars: Nasa prepares to launch its latest rover

Posted on by

Perseverance mission aims to land on crater to search for possible microbial Martians

Nasa’s most sophisticated rover yet is due to blast off for Mars on a mission to answer one of the most profound questions: did life ever emerge on another planet?

Mission controllers have set their sights on the 28-mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater north of the planet’s equator. The landing site is one of the most promising spots for any microbial Martians to have been preserved in rock formed when the crater held a lake nine times larger than Loch Ness.

Continue reading...

Drain brain: Nasa offers prize money for best lunar loo design

Posted on by

Agency hopes to attract novel solutions for its Artemis mission to the moon in 2024

“It certainly isn’t the prime focus of the mission,” said Nasa’s Mike Interbartolo. “We’re not going back to the moon so we can say we pooped on the moon, but we don’t want an Apollo situation either.”

Interbartolo, is project manager for the Lunar Loo Challenge, a Nasa competition launched on Thursday that hopes to attract new and innovative solutions to the problem of capturing and containing human waste in space.

Continue reading...

SpaceX Dragon crew capsule docks at International Space Station

Posted on by
  • A milestone for two Nasa astronauts in historic mission
  • First such rendezvous by US spacecraft since 2011

A mere 19 hours after blasting off from Florida, and with a short break for some Black Sabbath music in between, two Nasa astronauts docked the SpaceX Dragon crew capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday in another milestone moment for their historic mission.

Related: Trump wants America looking at the stars as he drags it through the gutter

Continue reading...

SpaceX successfully launches Nasa astronauts into orbit

Posted on by
  • Donald Trump and Mike Pence witness launch in Florida
  • First attempt was cancelled minutes from blast-off

A rocketship named Dragon breathed new fire into America’s human spaceflight programme on Saturday, carrying two astronauts on a much-anticipated adventure.

Related: Trump wants America looking at the stars as he drags it through the gutter

Continue reading...

Trump wants America looking at the stars as he drags it through the gutter

Posted on by

The president is due to attend the rescheduled launch of a manned SpaceX rocket – a welcome diversion from the coronavirus crisis

Making America great again just wasn’t enough. “President Trump is making space great again,” the Republican National Committee declared this week.

Donald Trump returns to Cape Canaveral in Florida on Saturday to witness the rescheduled launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying Nasa astronauts that was delayed by weather three days earlier.

Continue reading...

‘The big show’: US poised to return to human spaceflight with historic launch

Posted on by

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in partnership with Nasa, to launch Falcon 9 rocket from Florida carrying two American astronauts

In a historic moment a decade in the making, the skies above Florida will light up on Wednesday when the launch of a rocket born from a groundbreaking public-private partnership returns the United States to the business of human spaceflight.

Not since the retirement of Nasa’s space shuttle fleet in 2011 has the US possessed the capability to send its own astronauts into orbit, and the success of this week’s mission, formally known as SpaceX Demo-2, is likely to shape the direction of the space agency’s near-Earth ambitions for a generation.

Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch first astronauts from US soil since 2011

Posted on by

Falcon 9 rocket to make history as billionaire seeks to commercialise space travel

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company hopes to make history on Wednesday by launching the first astronauts into space from US soil in nine years, as the billionaire takes the next step in his dream to commercialise space travel.

Donald Trump will be among the spectators at Kennedy space centre in Florida to witness the launch, which has been given the green light despite the coronavirus lockdown.

Continue reading...

Nasa head of human spaceflight suddenly resigns days before ‘historic’ space mission

Posted on by

Doug Loverro quits ahead of next week’s mission to send two astronauts to the International Space Station on a SpaceX flight

A leading figure at Nasa responsible for the agency’s human spaceflight programs has suddenly resigned just days before the US is set to send astronauts back into space from American soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle program was retired almost a decade ago.

Doug Loverro, the official in charge of the human spaceflight division, left on Monday, Nasa said.

Continue reading...

Tom Cruise and Nasa in talks over film to be shot in outer space – reports

Posted on by

Elon Musk reportedly involved in the production, which if confirmed would be first feature film ever made in space

Tom Cruise is in talks with Nasa about working on a movie shot in outer space, according to the head of the space agency.

“Nasa is excited to work with Tom Cruise on a film aboard the Space Station!,” Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote on Twitter.

Continue reading...

Nasa picks Bezos’s Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX to build new lunar landers

Posted on by

Alabama company Dynetics also chosen for moon landing project, as three firms prepare to compete

Nasa has selected three private space companies to lead the development of lunar landers for its forthcoming moon landings.

The three companies are Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos; Elon Musk’s SpaceX; and Dynetics, based in Huntsville, Alabama, Nasa announced on Thursday.

Continue reading...

Life, but not as they knew it: ISS crew return to Earth transformed by Covid-19

Posted on by

American and Russian crew touch down in Kazakhstan after months on International Space Station

The three-person crew of the International Space Station returned to Earth on Friday morning, arriving back to a world that has been radically transformed by coronavirus in the time they were away.

Space travel is often a journey into the unknown, but for Americans Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, and Russian Oleg Skripochka, their return to Earth may bring more surprises than the time they spent in orbit. The trio’s landing capsule touched down on the Kazakh steppe in the early hours of the morning.

Continue reading...

Katherine Johnson, Nasa mathematician portrayed in Hidden Figures, dies at 101

Posted on by

Johnson overcame racial and gender-based discrimination to become an integral part of Nasa’s work in space exploration

Katherine Johnson, one of the trailblazing African American mathematicians whose story was told in the hit film Hidden Figures, has died, Nasa announced on Monday. She was 101.

Related: How history forgot the black women behind Nasa’s space race

Continue reading...

Christina Koch returns to Earth after record-breaking space mission

Posted on by

Koch lands in Kazakhstan after 328 days in space, the longest continuous spaceflight by a female astronaut

She would miss the friendship of her crewmates, she said, and of course the spectacular views.

But after 328 days on the International Space Station – the longest continuous spaceflight ever undertaken by a female astronaut – Christina Koch could not deny last week that she was looking forward to experiencing some very simple pleasures back on Earth, including “the feeling of wind on my face”.

Continue reading...

Boeing Starliner space capsule goes off course on first test flight

Posted on by

Officials say spacecraft is in stable orbit but problem may delay mission to carry Nasa astronauts

Boeing’s new Starliner capsule ran into trouble and went off course in orbit minutes after blasting off on Friday on its first test flight, a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.

Initially everything went flawlessly as the Atlas V rocket launched with the Starliner shortly before sunrise. But half an hour into the flight, Boeing reported that the capsule had not got into the position needed to get to the International Space Station.

Continue reading...

Race against time to launch Europe’s troubled mission to Mars

Posted on by

European Space Agency asks for help from Nasa with ExoMars project as trials fail and cost rises to €1bn

Space engineers are racing against time to fix major faults in the robot probe they plan to send to Mars next year. The complex parachute system that should slow ExoMars – Europe’s largest ever planetary mission – as it plunges into the Martian atmosphere failed catastrophically during recent tests.

As a result, the European Space Agency has called for emergency help from Nasa space engineers to help them save their stricken mission. New parachutes are now being tested at the US Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and will be subject to high-altitude trials in two or three months.

Continue reading...

Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe beams back first insights from sun’s edge

Posted on by

Flying closer than any other mission, spacecraft set to unravel the sun’s mysteries

Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe, which has flown closer to the sun than any spacecraft, has beamed back its first observations from the edge of the sun’s scorching atmosphere.

The first tranche of data offers clues to long-standing mysteries, including why the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona, is hundreds of times hotter than its surface, as well as the precise origins of the solar wind.

Continue reading...

Daring Mars mission to send rocks back to Earth in hunt for past life

Posted on by
Europe poised to join US in complex plan to find evidence of fossil microbes on red planet

Engineers plan to collect rocks on Mars and bring samples to Earth, in one of the most complex robot space projects envisaged. The scheme, being developed by Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa), will involve robot rovers finding rocks that might contain evidence of past life.

The samples would be blasted into space, intercepted by an unmanned spacecraft, and dropped by parachute in the Utah desert, with the 500g of Martian soil and rock shared with researchers round the world.

Continue reading...

Nasa’s Voyager 2 sends back its first message from interstellar space

Posted on by

Nasa craft is second to travel beyond heliosphere but gives most detailed data yet

Twelve billion miles from Earth, there is an elusive boundary that marks the edge of the sun’s realm and the start of interstellar space. When Voyager 2, the longest-running space mission, crossed that frontier more than 40 years after its launch it sent a faint signal from the other side that scientists have now decoded.

The Nasa craft is the second ever to travel beyond the heliosphere, the bubble of supersonic charged particles streaming outwards from the sun. Despite setting off a month ahead of its twin, Voyager 1, it crossed the threshold into interstellar space more than six years behind, after taking the scenic route across the solar system and providing what remain the only close-up images of Uranus and Neptune.

Continue reading...