Tag: Space Exploration

Watch Japan launch navigation satellite on its 1st mission of 2025 on Feb. 2

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「みちびき6号機」（準天頂衛星）／H3ロケット5号機打上げライブ中継 – YouTube Watch On Japan will launch its first mission of the year early Sunday morning (Feb. 2), and you can watch the action live. An H3 rocket is scheduled to launch the Michibiki 6 navigation satellite from Tanegashima Space Center on Sunday during a two-hour window that opens at 3:30 a.m. EST (0830 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Japan time). You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or directly via JAXA. Coverage will begin 40 minutes before the window opens.…

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Private Blue Ghost moon lander sees gorgeous lunar eclipse from Earth orbit (video)

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Blue Ghost, the “little lander” from Firefly Aerospace that’s headed to the moon, has captured the littlest lunar eclipse ever (as well as our hearts). Firefly contracted SpaceX to launch the company’s “Ghost Riders in the Sky” mission last month (Jan. 15) on a Falcon 9 rocket, out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Since then, the lander has been camped out in Earth orbit, undergoing systems checks and preparing to light its engines for a translunar injection burn, which will propel the probe on a four-day trajectory for…

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NASA’s Juno spacecraft watches most powerful volcanic event ever seen on Jupiter’s moon Io

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Even for Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, a recent volcanic event witnessed by NASA’s Juno spacecraft takes the biscuit. The event was just one eruption centralized in a newly found hotspot region of Io estimated to be larger than Lake Superior on Earth. The currently unnamed region is so powerful that the energy it belts out is equivalent to six times the energy produced by all of Earth’s power plants combined. The team behind these findings used data collected by Juno, which made flybys…

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NASA’s new SPHEREx space telescope to launch in February — it can do what the JWST can’t

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In late February, if all goes to plan, a new character will enter NASA’s space telescope epic. It’s an eggshell white, conical probe named SPHEREx, which (get ready for a mouthful) stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer. And, because it works with infrared light, SPHEREx is meant to reveal things even the trailblazing James Webb Space Telescope cannot. “Taking a snapshot with JWST is like taking a picture of a person,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA…

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NASA astronaut Suni Williams sets new record on 5.5-hour spacewalk outside ISS (video)

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Two NASA astronauts working outside of the International Space Station on Thursday (Jan. 30) were able to finally remove a faulty radio communications unit, succeeding where two previous spacewalks had been unsuccessful. The extended work needed to free the radio frequency group (RFG) by Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore came at a cost, though, as the two ran out of time to accomplish all of the tasks planned for Thursday’s EVA (extravehicular activity). Williams and Wilmore, who launched together on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and are serving together on…

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Watch a SpaceX rocket launch the next-gen SpainSat NG 1 satellite into orbit tonight

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SpaceX is set to launch a next-generation Spanish communications satellite tonight (Jan. 29) and you can watch it live online. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying SpainSat Next Generation 1 (SpainSat NG 1), a communications satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA) and Hisdesat communications, is scheduled to lift off from Pad 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a two-hour window that opens at 8:34 p.m. EST (0134 GMT on Jan. 30). SpaceX will webcast the launch live beginning about 15 minutes prior to liftoff, which you can…

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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander snaps its 1st photos of the moon (images)

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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander has snapped its first photos of its distant target. On Monday (Jan. 27), Texas-based Firefly released two photos of the moon that Blue Ghost captured from Earth orbit. One shows the natural satellite all alone, a small grayish dot in an empty black sea; the other is a selfie, showing the moon glowing above some of Blue Ghost’s golden hardware. “While Blue Ghost is in Earth orbit, we’ll continue to keep an eye on our final destination! To the moon!” Firefly said in a…

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Watch India launch a new navigation satellite into orbit today on its 1st mission of 2025

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Launch of GSLV-F15/NVS-02 Mission from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota – YouTube Watch On India will launch its first mission of 2025 this evening (Jan. 28), and you can watch the action live. The Indian Space Research Organisation‘s (ISRO) Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is scheduled to lift off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the island of Sriharikota, today at 7:53 p.m. EST (0053 GMT and 6:23 a.m. local time on Jan. 29). It will be the 100th launch overall from the spaceport, according to ISRO. You…

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What time is Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ‘moon gravity’ launch on Jan. 28? Here’s how to watch live

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Blue Origin will launch its first suborbital rocket launch of 2025 this week — and attempt a wild spin trick to mimic the moon’s gravity during the flight — but if you want to see it live, you’ll need to know when and where to tune in. An uncrewed New Shepard rocket will launch the so-called NS-29 mission no earlier than Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 11:30 a.m. EST (10:30 a.m. CST/1630 GMT) from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. The mission will launch 30 different experiments, most of…

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India’s space agency completes 1st Gaganyaan astronaut crew capsule

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The capsule that will one day ferry Indian astronauts to space and return them to Earth has been fitted with the key technology required for the task — marking another milestone in the country’s pursuit to develop homegrown technology for independent human spaceflight capabilities. The country’s space agency, Indian Space Research Organization, announced on Wednesday (Jan. 22) that its Bengaluru center completed assembling the Gaganyaan crew module and equipping it with a liquid propulsion system, which is responsible for generating the thrust needed to control the capsule’s orientation and trajectory.…

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