The United States’ most experienced astronaut has hung up her flight suit. Peggy Whitson, who has spent 675 days in space over the course of four missions — three for NASA and one commercial — came to Space Center Houston on Monday (Jan. 8) for the reveal of her Axiom Space flight suit as it was placed on public display. She wore the emblem-adorned, blue and black garment as the commander of Ax-2, the second all-private astronaut flight to the International Space Station (ISS), which was organized by Axiom in…
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End of year, end of exhibit: Space shuttle Endeavour goes off view for a few years
With the end of 2023 comes the end of an endeavor — or rather Endeavour — as the retired NASA space shuttle goes off public view for the next few years. The California Science Center in Los Angeles has exhibited OV-105, better known as the orbiter Endeavour, since Oct. 30, 2012. The 11-year exhibition, which was housed in the center’s specially-built Samuel Oschin Pavilion, offered unmatched access to the spacecraft, as the public could not only walk around Endeavour, but also under it, as the vehicle was displayed in the…
Read MoreVirgin Galactic to launch 6th commercial spaceflight on Jan. 26
Virgin Galactic’s sixth commercial spaceflight will lift off next month, if all goes according to plan. The mission, known as Galactic-06, is targeted for Jan. 26, Virgin Galactic announced in a statement issued on Tuesday (Dec. 19). The flight will include four private astronauts — one from Texas, one from California, one from Austria and one jointly from Ukraine and California, according to the statement. Names of the participants were not released. Virgin Galactic, which is part of billionaire Richard Branson‘s Virgin Group of companies, takes tourists and private astronauts…
Read MoreWatch Chinese astronauts get haircuts aboard Tiangong space station (video)
China’s Shenzhou 17 astronauts have been taking care of grooming alongside their on-orbit obligations. Mission commander Tang Hongbo and rookie crewmates Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin recently helped each other get haircuts aboard the Tiangong space station. Video released by CMSA, China’s human spaceflight agency, shows Tang Shengjie cutting the hair of his colleague Jiang Xinlin using a smart device that also acts as a vacuum cleaner. The device sucks up hair to minimize potential risk of it clogging up the space station’s hardware. Related: How to see and track…
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