October 17th, 2024
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The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog organization, has issued another look at the NASA Artemis, back to the Moon, program. This GAO report – “Exploration Ground Systems Program Could Strengthen Schedule Decisions” – found that the program has made progress, but the Artemis schedule poses challenges. Schedule driver The Exploration Ground […]
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What happens when you blend Earth + music + movies created by astronauts? The outcome is EarthMusicTheater.org, “for the good of Earth…and joy of music.” There’s a featured movie every Friday, explains Dan Barstow, Education Mission Specialist for the Association of Space Explorers (ASE). He is managing their archive of stunning photos and movies of […]
China has rolled out a roadmap of space research goals for the period 2024 to 2050. The agenda is reportedly the first of its kind at a national level and was unveiled Tuesday by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the China Manned Space Agency. Details were revealed […]
Starship’s fifth flight test launched on Sunday, October 13. The fifth flight test of Starship took another step towards full and rapid reusability. The primary objectives of the test flight were met: the first ever return to launch site and catch of the Super Heavy booster; another Starship reentry and landing burn, and an on-target, […]
The Elon Musk/SpaceX Starship’s fifth flight test from Texas could launch as soon as October 13, pending regulatory, FAA approval. That approval has just been issued: “The FAA has issued a license modification authorizing SpaceX to launch multiple missions of the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle on the Flight 5 mission profile.” According to the FAA in […]
China’s first “reusable, returnable” test satellite returned to Earth, landing in the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The capsule of the Shijian-19 mission came to full stop on October 11. The craft was launched on September 27 by a Long March-2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest […]
The Air Force has announced that the classified X-37B robo-plane is soon to start a series of “novel maneuvers” prior to reentry to a designated landing site – likely Kennedy Space Center. This U.S. space plane was launched to a highly elliptical high Earth orbit aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket back on December 28, 2023. […]
NASA is faced with safely deorbiting, in one fell swoop, over 400 tons of space hardware in a few years – and ocean specialists are not keen on the move. Sustaining operations of the International Space Station through 2030 is touch-and-go, prior to its now planned slam-dunk reentry in early 2031 into isolated ocean […]
NASA’s CAPSTONE mini-spacecraft recently marked its 100th orbit in the near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). This Moon mission has been awarded by NASA an extension of its mission after operating in its NRHO for 670-plus days. CAPSTONE is now funded until December 2025. CAPSTONE stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, a […]
All those eye-catching, arguably clickbait headlines of bringing home stranded astronauts stuck in space underscores a worrisome reality. The United States is lacking a “go-get-em” capability for in-space rescue. The lessons of Apollo, Skylab and the space shuttle with respect to the rescue of astronauts in space appear to have been forgotten. That memory lapse […]
