The International Space Station just dodged a fast-moving hunk of orbiting junk. Controllers maneuvered the station away from a potential collision with a piece of debris today (Sept. 22) at 5:19 p.m. EDT (2119 GMT). They did so by firing the thrusters on a Russian Progress cargo spacecraft that’s docked to the orbiting lab’s Zvezda…
WASHINGTON — Commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin is considering development of commercial space stations, with NASA as a potential early customer. Blue Origin posted a job opening Sept. 18 for am “Orbital Habitat Formulation Lead” at its headquarters in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington. That individual will be charged with leading the company’s development…
WASHINGTON — The Space Force announced in June that one of its major field organizations will be an acquisition command that will unify the current mishmash of agencies that handle space programs. The new organization, the Space Systems Command, has not yet been stood up. In the meantime, representatives from several space buying agencies will…
After its famous flyby of Pluto in July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made history a second time when it buzzed the most distant object ever explored: 2014 MU69. “We set a record! Never before has a spacecraft explored something so far away,” Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator, said after the flyby. “I…
Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard spacecraft will take to the skies this week for the first time in nine months. New Shepard, which is designed to ferry people and payloads to suborbital space and back, will launch on an uncrewed test flight Thursday (Sept. 24) at 11:00 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) from Blue Origin’s Texas…
NASA and the United States Space Force are banding together for the future of human spaceflight. As the agency moves forward with its Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface by 2024, NASA is also working on its relationship with the newly-minted Space Force, which was formed Dec. 2019. Today (Sept.…
The space industry has a rich history of building supply-chain relationships to deliver complex and exacting space systems. The industry is also no stranger to partnering closely with suppliers and customers, including governments, to develop and deliver new technology and advance the art of the possible. However, while public-private partnerships are getting a lot of…
WASHINGTON — NASA and the U.S. Space Force have formally agreed to work together in areas like space policy, research, technology and the protection of the planet from hazardous objects such as asteroids. Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond discussed the new memorandum of understanding Sept. 22 in a…
SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft unveiled Azure Orbital Sept. 22, a service to help customers move data from satellites directly into the Azure cloud for processing and storage. “With Azure Orbital, we’re taking our infrastructure to space, enabling anyone to access satellite data and capabilities from Azure,” CEO Satya Nadella said during the Microsoft Ignite 2020…
PIXL, an instrument on the end of the Perseverance rover’s arm, will search for chemical fingerprints left by ancient microbes. NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has a challenging road ahead: After having to make it through the harrowing entry, descent, and landing phase of the mission on Feb. 18, 2021, it will begin searching for…
The fall equinox is today (Sept. 22), but for many it may feel like autumn has already arrived, with crisp weather in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, apple picking signs at U-pick farms and pumpkin spice lattes at local coffee shops. If it already feels like autumn in the Northern Hemisphere (and spring in the…
SAN FRANCISCO – Radar satellite operator Iceye raised $87 million in a Series C round announced Sept. 22, boosting the Finnish startup’s total investment tally to $152 million. “We’re grateful to have closed a great round,” Mark Matossian, Iceye US CEO, told SpaceNews. “Now, we can stand on the accelerator.” With the Series C round…
WASHINGTON — NASA used the release of a report on the Artemis program to seek full funding of the effort to return humans to the moon, warning that they had six months to secure its budget to keep a 2024 landing on schedule. NASA published a report Sept. 21 outlining its lunar exploration plans, including…
NASA is definitely targeting the moon’s south pole for a crewed landing in 2024 — but that timeline will be difficult to achieve if Congress doesn’t open its purse strings, and fast, agency chief Jim Bridenstine said. During a presentation with NASA’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group last Monday (Sept. 14), Bridenstine seemed to suggest that…
Autumn officially arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 9:31 a.m. EDT (1331 GMT). And consequently, our evening sky is now one in transition. Many of the striking star groups and rich Milky Way fields of a summer evening still remain with us in the western sky, while the brilliant star Capella…
A newfound Earth-size exoplanet drives home the close ties between math and astronomy. Scientists have found an alien world that orbits its host star every 3.14 Earth days, a close approximation of the famous mathematical constant pi, the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. (Pi is an irrational number; the digits to the…
WASHINGTON — L3Harris Technologies received a $119.1 million contract to upgrade and expand the network of U.S. military telescopes known as the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System that track objects in geostationary orbits. The contract, announced Sept. 21 by the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, funds upgrades to existing GEODSS sensors,…
WASHINGTON — Congress gave the U.S. Space Force a lot of elbow room to decide how it wants to organize itself as a new military branch. But if Space Force leaders take too long to deliver concrete plans, Congress will step in and do it for them, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of…
Saturn’s geyser-spewing moon Enceladus may be even more active than scientists had thought. Fresh images created using data from NASA’s dead Cassini spacecraft show that Enceladus’ northern hemisphere was resurfaced with ice relatively recently. This new information adds to the known activity in the southern hemisphere, where Cassini spotted more than 100 geysers blasting icy…
Astronomers have discovered a new type of alien world — the first known “ultrahot Neptune,” a giant planet that orbits its star 60 times closer than Earth does the sun, a new study finds. Previous research found that about 1 in 200 sunlike stars possesses a planet that circles its star so tightly that it…