Tag: Human Spaceflight

The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission will return to Earth early Tuesday morning (March 12), and you can watch their homecoming live. Crew-7’s Dragon capsule, named Endurance, undocked from the International Space Station on Monday (March 11) after the astronauts’ 6.5-month stay on the orbiting laboratory. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will splash down off the coast of Florida on Tuesday around 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 GMT). You can watch the reentry and recovery activities here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. Coverage will begin at…

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“The Flies” are ready to fly, so NASA is again in need of some new flyboys (and gals). On the same day that the space agency welcomed its latest class of astronauts, nicknamed “The Flies,” into its corps, NASA announced it is again accepting applications for its next group of candidates for flights to the International Space Station, the moon and, eventually, missions to Mars. “The breadth and depth of experience that this class brings to our space program is nothing short of amazing,” Shannon Walker, deputy chief of NASA’s…

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Robot, meet spacecraft. A new video shows what it’s like to capture a visiting cargo ship at the International Space Station (ISS) — specifically, a Northrop Grumman Cygnus vehicle, which arrived Feb. 1 with vital supplies for the Expedition 70 crew. NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara worked together at the controls of the Canadarm2 robot arm, in the ISS wraparound Cupola window, to make the cosmic catch. Moghbeli posted the footage on X, formerly Twitter, on Feb. 13. Related: Private Cygnus cargo ship arrives at the ISS carrying…

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The first Canadian who will fly to the moon now has a patch to represent his own mission, as well as the knowledge passed on by his country’s original explorers. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who in 2025 will fly as a member of NASA’s Artemis 2 crew on a flight around the moon, revealed the new emblem while meeting with students from First Nations University of Canada on Thursday (Feb. 8). The insignia reflects Hansen’s appreciation for Indigenous “ways of knowing.” “For the past decade, Jeremy has…

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Virgin Galactic’s sixth commercial spaceflight may be just around the corner. The launch window for the crewed suborbital mission, known as Galactic 06, opens on Jan. 26. And, to help remind us of this fact and build up interest in the flight, Virgin Galactic just released the mission’s patch. “The patch represents the Ukrainian, Austrian and United States nationalities showcasing our crew’s global background. One star for each Pilot and Astronaut crew and a central seven-point star denoting mountains and continents conquered by members of the crew,” the company wrote…

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The home of a famously sunken Mercury capsule and the spacecraft that brought the Apollo 13 crew back to Earth is getting an upgrade. The Cosmosphere, a world-class space museum located in Hutchinson, Kansas, announced this week that it is ready to continue with the redesign and renovation of its Hall of Space, a series of galleries that together allows visitors to step back through the history of space exploration by way of an extensive artifact collection. “We have done about a third of the museum, so starting with the…

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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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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…

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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…

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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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