Practice makes perfect, which is especially true for moon missions with astronauts on board. That’s why SpaceX and NASA recently completed more than 200 docking scenarios together with Starship hardware. Starship is the landing system that will bring astronauts to the lunar surface with the Artemis 3 mission, no earlier than 2026. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center spent 10 days using hardware from the Starship lander and NASA’s Orion orbiter (designed by Lockheed Martin) at “various approach angles and speeds,” NASA officials said in a release. “These real-world results,…
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Private Odysseus moon lander broke a leg during historic touchdown. ‘He’s a scrappy little dude.’ (new photos)
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander overcame a number of hurdles during its epic touchdown last week, including one or more broken legs. The 14-foot-tall (4.3 meters) Odysseus settled onto the gray dirt near the moon‘s south pole on Thursday (Feb. 22), pulling off the first American lunar landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. But Odysseus’ touchdown was a bit rough. Thanks to an issue with its navigation equipment, the six-legged lander came down faster than expected, onto a patch of lunar ground that was higher in elevation than…
Read MoreSpaceX to launch Crew-8 astronauts to the space station March 1: Watch live
What time is the Crew-8 launch? SpaceX is poised to launch three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS) this week on the company’s Crew-8 mission for NASA. The crew members’ spacecraft, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavor, will ride atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the historic Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is currently scheduled for no earlier than Friday, March 1 at 12:04 a.m. EST (0504 GMT). Crew-8 includes NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (mission commander), Michael Barratt (mission pilot), Jeanette Epps…
Read MoreJames Webb Space Telescope sees the infrared skeleton of a galaxy (image)
The James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared vision has transformed our view of a large, barred spiral galaxy, revealing its skeleton of dust illuminated by the glow of young stars. Visible-light images of NGC 1559, such as those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, show a glowing whirlpool of light with bright, young star clusters scattered across spiral arms laced with lanes of black dust. The JWST has now peered past the glare, its infrared vision revealing the galaxy’s innards. The JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) sees starlight filtered through the obscuring…
Read MoreNASA radar images show stadium-sized asteroid tumbling by Earth during flyby (photos)
A stadium-sized asteroid tumbled harmlessly past Earth this month as a powerful NASA radar system watched. Asteroid 2008 OS7 passed by Earth on Feb. 2, 2024 at a safe distance of 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers), about 7.5 times farther than the Earth-moon distance. While there was no risk of the space rock harming our planet, scientists with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the sophisticated Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) to produce a series of images of the asteroid as it passed by us. The new observations helped…
Read MoreApollo astronaut’s granddaughter opens immersive ‘Lunar Light’ moonwalk experience in Dallas
What do you get when you mix an Apollo astronaut’s legacy with a trio of shipping containers, the latest in VR technology, the cousin of a “Star Wars” robot and an escape room like no other? Well, if you are Danielle Roosa, the answer is clear: An immersive experience that can give anyone (10 years of age or older) the chance to explore the moon. Launching on Leap Day (Feb. 29) in Dallas, Texas, “The Lunar Light: Discovery” is the creation of Roosa’s “Back to Space,” a transmedia organization that…
Read MorePut on your eclipse glasses and look up to see the biggest sunspot in years before it disappears from view
A giant sunspot continued to break records this week and is currently visible to the unaided eye with solar eclipse glasses. Between Saturday (Feb. 24) and Monday (Feb. 26), as the sunspot known as AR3590 turned toward Earth, it also grew by around 25% to become the largest sunspot of the current 11-year solar cycle, solar cycle 25, measuring around 9.5 times the surface area of Earth. NASA says that while it is never safe to look directly at the sun with unprotected eyes, eclipse glasses are perfect for observing…
Read MoreIntuitive Machines’ historic moon landing builds momentum for Artemis, astronaut Tracy C. Dyson says (exclusive)
NASA sees an even brighter future for its human moon-landing program after a private robotic mission safely touched down last week. Astronaut Tracy C. Dyson says NASA‘s Artemis program, which aims to put boots on the moon as soon as 2026, is getting “momentum” from the private Intuitive Machines landing. That mission, known as IM-1, made the first soft U.S. lunar touchdown in 52 years this past Thursday (Feb. 22). “It means we can do it,” Dyson told Space.com Monday (Feb. 26) in an exclusive interview before she returns to…
Read MorePresident Biden congratulates Intuitive Machines on historic moon landing
The company that pulled off the first American moon landing in more than half a century just got a shout-out from the country’s commander in chief. U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Intuitive Machines on the historic touchdown of its Odysseus moon lander, which occurred on Thursday (Feb. 22) near the lunar south pole. The landing was “a thrilling step forward in a new era of space exploration,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House on Saturday (Feb. 24). “I congratulate the Intuitive Machines team who successfully landed Odysseus,…
Read MoreIngenuity Mars helicopter snapped rotor blade during hard landing last month (video, photo)
There’s no way Ingenuity could fly through this. Ingenuity, the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) helicopter that journeyed to Mars with NASA’s Perseverance rover, was grounded for good after suffering a hard landing during a Jan. 18 flight. New observations by Perseverance show just how rough that touchdown was and make it easy to understand why Ingenuity is now a frozen feature of the Martian landscape. Related: NASA to ‘wiggle’ broken Ingenuity Mars helicopter’s blades to analyze damage Zoomed-in view of NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter, captured by the SuperCam remote imager aboard…
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