Tag: NASA
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Godspeed, Robb Kulin: For first time since Apollo, astronaut candidate leaves training
News Brief: NASA says Alaskan astronaut candidate Robb Kulin is leaving his training program at the end of this month, one year after his selection for the Class of 2017. NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean confirmed that Kulin was resigning for personal reasons, marking the first time since 1968 that an astronaut candidate has left the…
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SLS mobile launch platform to go on the move this week
The Space Launch System’s mobile launch platform is pictured with a crawler-transporter during a lift procedure earlier this year. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett The mobile platform intended to carry NASA’s Space Launch System will trek to the mega-rocket’s launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as Thursday, before heading inside the spaceport’s…
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VP Mike Pence revs up NASA schedule for putting astronauts on station in lunar orbit
Vice President Mike Pence is flanked by portraits of NASA’s Orion space capsule and a space station in lunar orbit as he speaks at Johnson Space Center in Texas. (NASA via YouTube) During a pep talk to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas, Vice President Mike Pence today highlighted what he saw as the mistakes…
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Engineers still hopeful Mars rover will wake up after dust storm
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view Mars, with its surface partially hidden under a veil of dust, last month as the planet reached the closest point in its orbit to Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI Flight controllers have not heard from NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover since…
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Fresh findings about water ice at moon’s poles boost prospects for lunar settlement
The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the grayscale corresponds to surface temperature. Darker shades represent colder areas, while lighter shades indicate warmer…
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Engine test for NASA’s heavy-lift SLS rocket cuts off early, but achieves goals
News Brief: NASA put a developmental model of the RS-25 engine for its heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket through a hot-fire test today at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in attendance. Although the test firing ended at 319 seconds rather than the originally planned 500 seconds, officials said the test…
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Fastest, closest, hottest: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe blasts off to ‘touch the sun’
A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket sends NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spaceward from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (NASA via YouTube) NASA today sent a super-shielded spacecraft known as the Parker Solar Probe on a mission that will take it closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has flown, with…
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Photos: Parker Solar Probe closed up inside Delta 4 fairing for launch
Ready for a journey into the sun’s enigmatic, scorching corona, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been encapsulated inside the nose cone of its Delta 4-Heavy rocket for liftoff Saturday. These photos show the solar-powered probe’s enclosure inside the Delta 4 fairing at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, last month. Ground crews transported…
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NASA signs off on SpaceX’s “load-and-go” procedure for crew launches
A prototype of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule completed a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral in May 2015. Credit: SpaceX The NASA manager overseeing development of Boeing and SpaceX’s commercial crew ferry ships says the space agency has approved SpaceX’s proposal to strap in astronauts atop Falcon 9 rockets, then fuel the launchers in the…
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Blue Origin’s lunar lander program wins a share of NASA’s ‘tipping-point’ tech awards
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander on the lunar surface. (Blue Origin Illustration) NASA is awarding $44 million to six commercial partners to support “tipping-point” technologies that range from lunar landing capabilities to in-space refueling and spacecraft servicing. Blue Origin, the space venture that was founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and…