A pair of Rocket Lab-made spacecraft are about to embark on a two-step journey. The first step is the 55-hour, 2,500-mile stretch from California to the launch site at Cape Canaveral. The second step? Just 11 months and 230 million miles to Mars. The objective of the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) […]
NASA cancels $450M Viper moon mission, dashing ice prospecting dreams
Rising cost and schedule delays have led NASA to cancel a $ 450 million program to map water ice deposits on the moon, a natural resource that will almost certainly be central to supporting humanity’s long-term presence in the solar system. That program, called Viper — the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover — was scheduled […]
NASA and Boeing deny Starliner crew is ‘stranded’: “We’re not in any rush to come home”
NASA and Boeing officials pushed back against recent reporting that the two astronauts brought to the ISS on Starliner are stranded on board. The companies said in a press conference Friday that they are using “the luxury of time” to learn as much about the capsule as possible before it returns to Earth. The two […]
SpaceX scores $843M NASA contract to de-orbit ISS in 2030
NASA has selected SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will de-orbit the International Space Station in 2030 — a contract valued at as much as $ 843 million, the agency announced Wednesday. The ISS is nearing the end of its operational life, and as plans for new, commercially owned space stations heat up, the one […]
NASA puts $10M down on Mars sample return proposals from Blue Origin, SpaceX and others
It turns out the space industry has a lot of ideas on how to improve NASA’s $ 11 billion, 15-year plan to collect and return samples from Mars. Seven of these proposals have caught the agency’s attention. Announced today, NASA has awarded $ 1.5 million contracts to seven companies to further develop their plans for […]