NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, west of Baja California, at 9:39 a.m. PST Sunday after a record-breaking mission, traveling more than 1.4 million miles on a path around the Moon and returning safely to Earth, completing the Artemis I flight test.
Read MoreMonth: December 2022
SpaceX launches Japanese lander, UAE rover to the moon
A pioneering multinational moon mission is underway. A private Japanese moon lander carrying a United Arab Emirates (UAE) rover, among other payloads, launched early Sunday morning (Dec. 11) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Hakuto-R lander lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 2:38 a.m. EST (0738 GMT), kicking off the first mission for Tokyo-based company ispace. If all goes according to plan, Hakuto-R will make a soft lunar landing next spring — the first ever for a Japanese-built spacecraft. “This is a very important moment,”…
Read MoreSpaceX will launch Japanese moon lander, UAE rover early Sunday. Here’s how to watch.
SpaceX will launch a Japanese lander and United Arab Emirates (UAE) rover to the moon early Sunday (Dec. 11), and you can watch the action live. The Japanese company ispace’s Mission 1 is scheduled to lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Sunday at 2:38 a.m. EST (0738 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. You can watch live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company (opens in new tab). Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch. Lunar timeline: Humanity’s exploration of…
Read MoreOrion’s ‘Easter eggs’ revealed: NASA flew secret messages to the moon on Artemis 1
It can now be revealed that NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which is just a day away from returning to Earth, carried secret messages to the moon on its Artemis 1 mission. What’s more, the hidden notes were in plain sight (opens in new tab) the entire time. “We do have some Easter eggs in the view of the cockpit. So when you do get that view, happy hunting folks!” said Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis mission manager, on Nov. 18, the third day of the 25.5-day Artemis 1 mission. By “Easter eggs”…
Read MoreJames Webb Space Telescope peers into the ‘ghostly light’ of interstellar space
The first deep field image of the cosmos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has allowed scientists to study the faint almost ghostly light from orphan stars that exist between galaxies in galactic clusters. Not gravitationally bound to galaxies, these stars are pulled free of their homes and drift into intergalactic space by the massive tidal forces generated between galaxies in clusters. The light emitted by these stellar orphans is called intracluster light and it is so dim that it possesses just one percent of the brightness of…
Read MoreRocket Lab now aims to launch 1st Electron booster from US soil on Dec. 13
The commercial launch company Rocket Lab will have to wait a few more days for its first-ever launch from U.S. soil due to bad weather. The California-based Rocket Lab, which has been launching small satellites on its Electron rockets from New Zealand since 2017, is now targeting no earlier than Tuesday (Dec. 13) for the first flight from its new U.S. launch pad on Wallops Island, Virginia. The mission was originally scheduled to launch today (Dec. 9) to deliver six HawkEye 360 satellites to monitor global radio frequencies. “Due to…
Read MoreNASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission is going so well that engineers added more Orion tests (video)
Artemis 1 is almost home, and NASA is readying for the next stages already. The Orion spacecraft of Artemis 1 is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday (Dec. 11), and the agency is already looking ahead to future missions of the Artemis program. “Artemis 1 and Orion have been phenomenal,” Nujoud Merancy, chief of the exploration mission planning office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told Space.com in a video interview. Orion was tasked with flying around the moon to collect data for future crewed missions and…
Read MoreNASA Commits to Future Artemis Moon Rocket Production
NASA has finalized its contract with Boeing of Huntsville, Alabama, for approximately $3.2 billion to continue manufacturing core and upper stages for future Space Launch System (SLS) rockets for Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.
Read MoreSpace Station Science Highlights: Week of December 5, 2022
Crew members aboard the International Space Station conducted scientific investigations during the week of Dec 5 that included assessing transfer of adaptation to space from one generation of plants to another, evaluating a treatment for biofilms, and measuring microgravity’s effect on bacteria.
Read MoreOrion Gazes at Moon Before Return to Earth
On flight day 20 of the Artemis I mission, Dec. 5, 2022, Orion captured the Moon on the day of return powered flyby, the final major engine maneuver of the flight test.
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