Tag: NASA
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SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke, and others make major progress on Cape launch facilities
The two spaceport launch facilities in the Cape Canaveral area — NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the U.S. Space Force’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) — are on the verge of even bigger changes than have been seen in the last few years. In a recent flyover of the Cape, NSF obtained new…
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Blue Origin Wins NASA Contract to Deliver VIPER Rover to Lunar South Pole
The United States’ space agency NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth about $190 million to deliver its VIPER rover to the lunar surface, giving new life to a mission previously shelved due to cost overruns and delays. Under the award, Blue Origin will transport the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard its…
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SpaceX launches NASA, NOAA missions exploring the impacts of the Sun
The Falcon 9 carrying NASA’s IMAP mission transits the disk of the Sun seconds after lifting off from Kennedy Space Center. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now. Update: Launch occurred at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 UTC). With successful payload deployments complete about 1.5 hours after liftoff. A trio of Sun-studying, marquee missions for both NASA and the…
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Zeno Power to Acquire Nuclear Waste for Long-Duration Space Missions
Zeno Power has signed an agreement with French nuclear fuel cycle manager Orano to acquire Americium-241, an isotope the U.S. startup plans to repurpose for powering long-duration and deep-space missions. The company said it will make a “multi-million-dollar” annual payment to Orano for the supply, which will be sourced from the firm’s recycling site in…
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Firefly Secures $10 Million From NASA for Additional Lunar Mission Data
Firefly Aerospace said it received an additional $10 million from NASA after delivering extra scientific data and imagery collected during its Blue Ghost Mission 1 to the Moon earlier this year. The mission, which spanned 45 days en route to the lunar surface and two weeks of operations on it, yielded nearly 120 gigabytes of…
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U.S. Launches Three Spacecraft Aboard Falcon 9 to Boost Space Weather Monitoring
The United States launched three spacecraft on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to improve monitoring of solar activity and its effects on technology, astronauts, and infrastructure on Earth. The launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center sent the probes on a journey toward the Lagrange 1 point, around 1.5 million kilometers from the sun,…
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NASA names 24th astronaut class, including prior SpaceX crew member
NASA has named its new group of astronaut candidates. The space agency on Monday introduced the four men and six women who comprise its 2025 trainee class during a ceremony held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Following two years of basic training, the new candidates will be eligible for mission assignments in low-Earth…
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NASA, SpaceX launch IMAP and rideshare payloads to study space weather at L1
NASA and SpaceX successfully launched the agency’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) from Florida on Wednesday morning. Joining IMAP on its way to Lagrange Point 1 are two additional rideshare payloads: NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) and the joint NASA/University of Illinois Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. Liftoff took place on Wednesday, Sept. 24,…
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A geologist, a former SpaceX launch director and a commercial astronaut; meet NASA’s 10 new astronaut candidates
NASA’s 2025 Astronaut Candidate join together after being announced to the public on Sept. 22, 2025. From left to right, Erin Overcash, Katherine Spies, Cameron Jones, Ben Bailey, Adam Fuhrmann, Rebecca Lawler, Imelda Muller, Yuri Kubo, Anna Menon, Lauren Edgar. With its eyes on creating a persistent human presence on the Moon and pushing closer…
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NASA showcases its latest class of astronauts — including a geologist from the Seattle area
Geologist Lauren Edgar waves during NASA’s introduction of new astronaut candidates. (NASA via YouTube) NASA has named the next 10 members of its astronaut corps, and one of those 10 is a geologist with plenty of space research experience who hails from the Pacific Northwest. Lauren Edgar — who regards Sammamish, Wash., as her hometown…