New Horizons is in good health and cruising closer each day to its next encounter: a flyby of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) 2014 MU69 (or "MU69" for short). If you follow our mission, you likely know that flyby will occur on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 2019, which is just barely over …
When NASA's Parker Solar Probe lifts off on top of a Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle in summer 2018, it will undergo both intense vibration from the physical forces of the rocket engines, as well as acoustic effects from the sound of the engines and the rocket going through the atmosphere.
Verifying the spacecraft and its systems are ready for the rigors of launch is one of the most important parts of testing. On Nov. 3, Parker Solar Probe passed vibration testing at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL, in Laurel, Maryland, where it was designed and built. On Nov. 14, the spacecraft successfully completed acoustic testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and is now being prepared for further environmental tests.
On Monday, Nov. 6, 2017, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft arrived at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for environmental tests.
NASA is postponing launch of the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) until 2018. The mission was previously planned to launch Dec. 8, 2017, on an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket from the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. NASA and Orbital ATK need additional time to assess a separation component of the rocket. More …
Orbital ATK's Pegasus XL rocket is being prepared to launch NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON mission. The rocket is being prepared in a facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in California.
All components of the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket that will launch NASA's Parker Solar Probe have arrived for prelaunch processing at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Launch preparations are beginning to get off the ground for NASA's upcoming Parker Solar Probe mission, scheduled to lift off in summer 2018 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.
Today's blog is from Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado—principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission. Three weeks ago we put our New Horizons spacecraft into hibernation mode, the first time we'd done that since late 2014, before the Pluto flyby. By coincidence, that same day – April 7—was also the …
Today's blog is from Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado—principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission. As 2016 ends, I can't help but point out an interesting symmetry in where the mission has recently been and where we are going. Exactly two years ago we had just taken New Horizons …
We have successfully contacted each of the 8 observatories on our first attempt. This bodes very well for their health and status, which is the next thing we will be carefully checking with the next contacts in the coming days. It is an amazingly rewarding feeling to spend such an intense and focused time working …
