Blogs

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission remains on track, with a launch period opening on Thursday, Oct. 10. The next major milestone for Clipper is Key Decision Point E on Monday, Sept. 9, in which the agency will decide whether the project is ready to proceed to launch and mission operations. NASA will provide more information at …

Dragon spacecraft configurations topped Wednesday’s task list aboard the International Space Station as the orbital residents prepare for crew swap activities in September and October. Human research duties and lab maintenance tasks rounded out the day for the nine crewmates living and working on the orbital outpost. Six astronauts worked throughout the day configuring the …

Tuesday was a science-packed day aboard the International Space Station as the astronauts and cosmonauts explored space botany, eye health, and plasma physics to promote longer spaceflights farther away from Earth. NASA Flight Engineers Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps of Expedition 71 took turns tending to plants growing inside the Columbus laboratory module’s Veggie space …

NASA’s Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) mission — a spacecraft that will study the Sun’s atmosphere — passed a critical mission review on Aug. 21, 2024. The review, called Key Decision Point C, evaluated the mission’s preliminary design and program plan to achieve its target launch readiness date in 2027. With the successful review, MUSE now …

Stephen Broccardo, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, is the principal investigator for the Sea-going Sky-Scanning Sun-tracking Atmospheric Research Radiometer (SeaSTAR). The ship-based instrument is one of many in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to check the information that NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean …

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System has begun deployment operations. Upon an initial attempt to unfurl, the solar sail paused when an onboard power monitor detected higher than expected motor currents. Communications, power, and attitude control for the spacecraft all remain normal while mission managers work to understand and resolve the cause of the interruption …

A suite of training and conferences kept the International Space Station residents busy on Monday as they embark on a new week of work in microgravity. Though a light duty science day, some crew members did schedule in time to assess how spaceflight affects the human body and prep for upcoming physical science investigations. In …

NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday during a news conference. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew. The news conference …

NASA’s next science mission to Mars is targeted to launch no earlier than Sunday, Oct. 13, on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Advanced research hardware work took precedence aboard the International Space Station at the end of the week as the crew readied satellite gear and experimental communications components for placement in the vacuum of space. NASA Flight Engineer Matthew Dominick spent Friday installing the Small Satellite Orbital Deployer onto the Kibo laboratory module’s multipurpose experiment platform …