Tag: Space Exploration

SpaceX to launch Starship megarocket’s Flight 7 test mission on Jan. 13

NeRD

SpaceX’s Starship will fly for the seventh time ever early next week, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX announced today (Jan. 8) that it’s targeting Monday (Jan. 13) for Flight 7 of Starship, the 400-foot-tall (122 meters), fully reusable megarocket designed to help humanity settle the moon and Mars. Starship is scheduled to lift off Monday at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) from Starbase, SpaceX‘s manufacturing and launch site in South Texas. You’ll be able to watch the action live; the company will webcast the flight beginning about 35…

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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab closed due to raging LA fires

NeRD

An approaching wildfire has forced the closure of NASA’s lead center for robotic planetary exploration. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which lies at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles, has been temporarily shuttered due to the Eaton fire, which is raging nearby. “JPL is closed except for emergency personnel. No fire damage so far (some wind damage) but it is very close to the lab. Hundreds of JPLers have been evacuated from their homes & many have lost homes. Special thx to our emergency…

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NASA won’t decide on Mars Sample Return plan until mid-2026

NeRD

NASA is considering two ways to get its precious Mars samples back to Earth, but the agency won’t pick a winner for another 18 months or so. Analysis of those samples, which are being collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, could reveal a wealth of data about Mars and its history — including, perhaps, whether the Red Planet has ever hosted life. NASA is therefore eager to get the Mars material — about 30 cigar-sized, sealed tubes containing rock cores and sediment — home, and then on to laboratories around the…

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How NASA and Sierra Space are preparing for Dream Chaser space plane’s 1st flight to ISS

NeRD

LOUISVILLE, Colorado — The scene here is intense. Slowly, ever so slowly, the Sierra Space Dream Chaser spaceplane draws near the International Space Station. There is focused face time here as mission controllers monitor their computer screens and diligently monitor incoming data. Anxiety mounts within the private company’s control center as the craft makes its way through various perfunctory pauses — cautiously approaching the International Space Station (ISS) and enters the approach ellipsoid. The outstretched Canadarm2 robotic arm grapples a fixture on Dream Chaser‘s Shooting Star cargo module. A go-ahead…

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US Space Force broke its launch record in 2024 with 93 liftoffs

NeRD

An impressive 93 United States Space Force launches lifted off from Florida’s coast in 2024, setting a new Space Force record for the second year in a row. Space Launch Delta 45 (SLD 45), headquartered at Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, is a unit of the United States Space Force responsible for managing space launch operations on the East Coast, including launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Last year, SLD 45 — the world’s busiest spaceport in 2024 — saw a record-breaking 93…

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BluShift Aerospace hopes to launch 1st suborbital rocket from Maine in 2025

NeRD

After a successful engine burn test in October, Maine-based bluShift Aerospace is planning for its next big milestone: a suborbital flight test toward the end of 2025. The rocket company, located at Brunswick Landing in southern Maine, was founded over a decade ago. In January of 2021, the company carved its niche in space history when it became the first to commercially use non-toxic biofuel to power its inaugural rocket prototype, Stardust 1.0, on a successful test launch. According to bluShift CEO and founder Sascha Deri, the rocket’s “secret sauce”…

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NASA will announce update to Mars sample return plans on Jan. 7. Here’s how to listen in

NeRD

The year 2025 isn’t even a week old and NASA is already gearing up for its first big announcement, this one about the agency’s ambitious, yet beleaguered, Mars sample return mission. On Tuesday (Jan. 7), NASA’s top brass will hold an audio-only press conference to update the public on its Mars sample return program. The media briefing will begin at 1:00 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), and you’ll be able to listen in online via NASA’s website. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, the agency’s associate administrator for science missions,…

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How to watch SpaceX launch its 1st Falcon 9 rocket of 2025 tonight

NeRD

SpaceX will launch its first Falcon 9 rocket of 2025 today, if all goes according to plan. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off on Friday (Jan. 3) at 8:27 p.m. EST (0127 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight will launch the Thuraya 4 spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit on behalf of Space42, a satellite and space services company based in the United Arab Emirates. The satellite will provide mobile communications services throughout Europe, the Middle East and…

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Newly uncovered oxygen reaction could aid the search for alien life

NeRD

Scientists have discovered a new way oxygen can form in carbon-dioxide-rich atmospheres of worlds beyond our own —- challenging assumptions about how we should search for life on other planets, and possibly about the origins of life itself. “Most of the search for life, or life signatures, on other planets is actually proving that whatever we observe can be generated through means that do not require life,” David Benoit, a senior lecturer in Molecular Physics and Astrochemistry at the University of Hull’s E.A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics who was not…

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Space debris crash in Kenya village believed to be from leftover rocket hardware

NeRD

Kenya Space Agency (KSA) officials in Nairobia, Kenya, East Africa, are reporting that on Dec. 30 a large metallic ring roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter and weighing some 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) fell from the sky, reportedly “red-hot” and crashed into Mukuku village, in Makueni county – in the country’s south. Investigators think the object is space debris, believed to be rocket leftovers that came crashing down, reportedly within the village at roughly 3 p.m. local time. The KSA “secured the area and retrieved the debris, which is…

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