Tag: Human Spaceflight

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Art Cotterell is Research Associate at the School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University. In recent years, a new “space race” has intensified between the United States and China. At a campaign rally last weekend, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump invoked this rivalry when declaring the US will “lead the world in space,” echoing Democratic counterpart Vice President Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, the president of China, Xi Jinping, has…

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China’s Shenzhou 18 crew have passed the keys to the Tiangong space station to its new occupants. The Shenzhou 19 mission launched on a Long March 2F rocket from Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China on Oct. 29 and arrived at the Tiangong space station 6.5 hours later.  Shortly thereafter, at 12:51 a.m. EDT (0451 GMT) on Oct. 30, the hatch between the Shenzhou 19 spacecraft and Tiangong was opened, allowing the three Shenzhou 18 mission astronauts to greet the trio of new arrivals aboard. The formal handover of the station…

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This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Loizos Heracleous is a Professor of Strategy at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. SpaceX has launched its Crew Dragon spacecraft on a “rescue mission” to bring back two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) since June. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams travelled to the space station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was on its first mission with a human crew. But several engines malfunctioned once in…

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China has been operating its completed Tiangong orbital outpost for almost two years now — and is looking to expand its capabilities with new modules and spacecraft. The three-module, T-shaped Tiangong space station was fully assembled in November 2022, with the arrival of the Mengtian science module. The station seems set to grow again, however. “In the future, we will try to upgrade our facilities,” said Li Ming, chairman of the science and technology committee of the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), speaking during a plenary session on human…

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Four space station crewmates are safely back on Earth after an extended mission and a long wait for the weather to cooperate. SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps all with NASA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida on Friday (Oct. 25) at 3:29 a.m. EDT (0729 GMT). Their landing after 235 days — including a more than two-week wait on board the International Space Station (ISS) for acceptable conditions — set a record for…

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The Chinese company Deep Blue Aerospace is getting into the space tourism business. Deep Blue, which is based in the eastern province of Jiangsu, announced on Wednesday (Oct. 23) that it plans to start launching paying customers to suborbital space in 2027. Tickets will cost 1.5 million RMB apiece — about $210,000 U.S. at current exchange rates. For that price, customers will get “much more than a brief weightlessness experience,” Deep Blue wrote in a statement on Wednesday. (Translation to English by Google.) “They will experience the vastness and mystery…

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NASA is still unsure when it will next put astronauts on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which experienced issues during its first crewed test flight this summer. Starliner‘s next “potential” crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025 “will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established,” NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday (Oct. 15). NASA and Boeing are still reviewing the requirements for Starliner’s certification, after propulsion problems arose on the first test flight with astronauts, which launched on June 5,…

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NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick has given us dramatic, Dragon’s-eye views of Hurricane Milton churning its way toward landfall. Dominick posted a timelapse video on X (formerly Twitter) today, showing Hurricane Milton through the window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, which is docked to the International Space Station (ISS). Endeavour is flying SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission for NASA; in early March, the capsule carried Dominick to the orbiting lab along with fellow NASA astronauts Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, as well as Alexander Grebenkin of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. Zoomed-in view of…

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Blue Origin will debut a new spacecraft on Monday (Oct. 7), if all goes according to plan. Jeff Bezos‘ aerospace company plans to launch its uncrewed NS-27 mission Monday morning, sending its New Shepard rocket-capsule combo on a brief trip to suborbital space. It will be the first mission for this particular vehicle, according to Blue Origin. NS-27 will launch from the company’s West Texas site during a window that opens at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT; 8:00 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch the action live via Blue…

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring an investigation of the anomaly a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket experienced during the Crew-9 astronaut launch on Sept. 28. That liftoff successfully sent a Crew Dragon capsule carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov toward the International Space Station. However, the Falcon 9‘s upper stage suffered an issue after deploying the capsule, SpaceX revealed on Sept. 29. The issue was an “off-nominal deorbit burn,” which resulted in the upper stage landing in the ocean outside of its target disposal…

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