Tag: NASA
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NASA decides against using Gateway for 2024 lunar landing
As NASA organizes a push to return a human presence to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era, the agency has made critical changes to the plan that would enable a crewed lunar landing to occur no later than 2024. One of these modifications involved the Lunar Gateway, a modular space station…
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Astronaut’s family won’t attend launch next month due to coronavirus threat
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy (left), Russian Soyuz commander Anatoly Ivanishin (center), and flight engineer Ivan Vagner (right) during training March 11 in Star City, Russia. Credit: Andrey Shelepin/Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy’s family will be watching remotely from halfway around the world when he blasts off April 9 from Kazakhstan to begin…
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Apollo astronaut Al Worden dies at 88
Astronaut Al Worden is seen during training before the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. Credit: NASA Former astronaut Al Worden, who orbited the moon and performed the first spacewalk in deep space in 1971, died Wednesday in Texas. He was 88. Born Feb. 7, 1932, in Jackson, Michigan, Worden graduated from United States Military Academy at…
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NASA institutes mandatory agency-wide telework policy
The Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Glenn Benson All NASA centers and facilities will begin a mandatory telework policy for agency and contractor employees effective immediately, except for “mission-essential” personnel, to combat the threat from the coronavirus pandemic, officials announced Tuesday. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement…
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Curiosity climbs and tilts at Mount Sharp; InSight offers surprises
As the Perseverance — formerly known as Mars 2020 — rover continues preparations for its launch to Mars in July, its older cousin, Curiosity, and extended family member, InSight, continue to reveal new and fascinating features of the Red Planet. For Curiosity, Mount Sharp has provided a new driving route to quickly reach a fascinating…
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NASA no longer counting on Gateway for 2024 moon landing
Artist’s concept of the Gateway mini-space station near the moon. Credit: NASA NASA is modifying plans to send astronauts back to the moon in 2024 by taking the Gateway — a mini-space station to be assembled in lunar orbit — out of the critical path in favor of a simplified architecture, according to the agency’s…
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NASA inspector general says SLS moon rocket costs continue to climb
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of the Space Launch System Block 1 variant. Credit: NASA The powerful Space Launch System rocket being built for NASA’s Artemis moon program by Boeing, using solid-propellant boosters from Northrop Grumman and main engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne, will have cost more than $18 billion by the…
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Coronavirus concerns force closure of NASA center, some space industry events canceled
File photo from the Satellite 2019 conference in Washington. Credit: Satellite 2019 An annual meeting of planetary scientists near Houston has been canceled due to concerns about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, and NASA has instructed its 1,200 employees at a field center in California to work from home until further notice after a worker there…
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DSCOVR resumes operations after eight-month outage
Artist’s concept of the Deep Space Climate Observatory. Credit: NOAA The Deep Space Climate Observatory has resumed regular observations after NOAA and NASA engineers uplinked a software patch to the spacecraft a million miles from Earth, restoring data on space weather and a daily series views of the sunlit side of our home planet. The…
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Seventh-grader wins contest to name new Mars rover: Perseverance
Alexander Mather, a seventh-grade student in Virginia, reads his winning essay proposing the name “Perseverance” for NASA’s next Mars rover. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani Twenty-eight thousand students across the United States submitted essays and proposed names for NASA’s newest Mars rover and on Thursday, the agency announced the winner: Perseverance, submitted by Virginia seventh-grader Alexander Mather.…