The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite T (GOES-T) – the third satellite in NOAA's GOES-R series – is now in Florida, undergoing final preparations ahead of its targeted launch on March 1, 2022. The satellite arrived at the Launch and Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 10, 2021, in a United States Air …
The launch readiness date for the James Webb Space Telescope is moving to no earlier than Dec. 22 to allow for additional testing of the observatory, following a recent incident that occurred during Webb's launch preparations. The incident occurred during operations at the satellite preparation facility in Kourou, French Guiana, performed under Arianespace overall responsibility. …
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is now encapsulated in the SpaceX payload fairings. Technicians with SpaceX installed the two halves of the fairing around the spacecraft over the course of two days, Nov. 16 and 17, inside the SpaceX Payload Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The payload fairing serves …
Weather is 90% go for the DART launch on Nov. 23, with only a 10% of violation (POV) for winds with no other area of concern. POV for backup day is 0% with no area of concern.
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft was attached to its payload adapter on Nov. 11 inside the SpaceX Payload Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. An integrated team of workers with NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP), SpaceX, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) completed the work in preparation for …
We continue to explore Webb's instrumentation this week, highlighting the Canadian contributions to the mission. As you'll see, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument is ideally suited for studying two of Webb's scientific themes. Scientists will use NIRISS to take advantage of the natural phenomenon of the atmospheric transmission of transiting exoplanets and …
NASA's Lucy spacecraft continues to operate in cruise mode – the standard mode for its orbit away from Earth. Checkouts for the Lucy instruments were successfully completed Nov. 8, and all instruments are working normally. Following checkout completion, the instruments were powered off, and the remaining spacecraft subsystem commissioning activities are continuing as scheduled. Lucy's …
As progress continues in Kourou, we check in with another one of Webb's instruments, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and its scientific lead, Pierre Ferruit: "It was more than 20 years ago that the European Space Agency (ESA) teamed up with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to build the amazing James Webb Space Telescope! The …
From a flash on the Sun to a glimmer in the sky, last week's solar storms illustrated the connection between the Sun and Earth. Three solar eruptions made their journey to Earth, culminating in aurora borealis, or northern lights, visible as far south as Utah. It began with two active regions on the Sun – …
Propelled by a recent swing past Venus, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is healthy and performing normally as it heads toward its next closest approach to the Sun on Nov. 21.
