Space News & Blog Articles

Tune into the SpaceZE News Network to stay updated on industry news from around the world.

Live coverage: NASA counting down to launch of Artemis 1 moon mission

Live coverage of the countdown and maiden flight of the Space Launch System on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

SFN Live

Live Launch Coverage Begins at 5:30 a.m. EDT

  214 Hits

Giant solar sail will propel tiny spacecraft to intercept and study asteroid

Artist’s concept of the NEA Scout mission, powered by aa solar sail, approaching an asteroid. Credit: NASA

Catching a ride on Artemis 1 is a miniaturized CubeSat called NEA Scout that will use a thin, aluminum-coated solar sail about the size of a tennis court to propel it towards the smallest asteroid ever to be studied by a spacecraft.

Continue reading
  193 Hits

Lunar demo mission to provide “stress test” for NASA’s Artemis moon program

NASA’s Orion spacecraft, with its European service module, on top of the Space Launch System moon rocket. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now

The first unpiloted mission for NASA’s Artemis moon program aims to prove out the most powerful rocket to ever launch from U.S. soil, and test the function of a human-rated spacecraft traveling more than 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon before blazing back through Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 25,000 mph.

Continue reading
  234 Hits

Italian microsatellite promises orbital photo bonanza after Artemis 1 launch

Artist’s illustration of the ArgoMoon spacecraft with the SLS moon rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage. Credit: ASI

Italian engineers are expecting a series of spectacular photos from a tiny satellite that will be released to fly in sync with the interim cryogenic propulsion stage that propels the Orion capsule and European service module to the moon from Earth orbit.

Continue reading
  183 Hits

Watch live: Russian cosmonauts on spacewalk outside space station



Continue reading
  181 Hits

NASA proceeding with Saturday launch attempt for Artemis 1 moon mission

NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket on pad 39B. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Spaceflight Now

Confident that out-of-bounds engine temperature readings during Monday’s Artemis 1 countdown came from a bad sensor, NASA officials gave the green light Thursday to move forward with another try Saturday afternoon to launch the agency’s giant new moon rocket on an unpiloted test flight from the Kennedy Space Center.

Continue reading
  239 Hits

Webb telescope eyes Phantom Galaxy with mid-infrared camera

The European Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, camera on the James Webb Space Telescope captured this view of M74, also known as the Phantom Galaxy. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team

Fresh images from the James Webb Space Telescope show the Phantom Galaxy in vibrant infrared light, part of a series of observations with the new $10 billion observatory to help astronomers study the formation of stars.

Continue reading
  299 Hits

Video: Replay of Artemis 1 wet dress rehearsal, now with countdown audio



Continue reading
  182 Hits

Video: Interview with former NASA astronaut Doug Hurley



Continue reading
  253 Hits

SpaceX closes out quartet of Starlink launches from Vandenberg

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Starlink 3-4 mission. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with 46 more Starlink internet satellites overnight Wednesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, completing a quartet of rapid-fire polar orbit Starlink missions from the West Coast spaceport since mid-July.

Continue reading
  205 Hits

NASA targets Saturday for next moon rocket launch attempt

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket on pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA/Sam Lott
NASA will make a second attempt to launch the agency’s giant Space Launch System rocket Saturday on a delayed test flight to send an unpiloted Orion crew capsule on a flight around the moon and back, a major milestone in the agency’s ambitious Artemis program.
Grounded Monday by trouble cooling one of the rocket’s four shuttle-era engines to the required pre-start temperature, managers said Tuesday engineers have come up with a work-around and plan to start a fresh countdown at 4:07 p.m. EDT Thursday.
That will set the stage for blastoff on the Artemis 1 mission at 2:17 p.m. Saturday, one day later than NASA’s original backup launch date. As always, NASA will have to work around the weather, with forecasters predicting a 60 percent chance of stormy conditions during the rocket’s two-hour launch window.
Mike Sarafin, chairman of NASA’s mission management team, said the core stage fueling procedure will be adjusted in an attempt to improve cooling to all four RS-25 engines. In addition, fittings will be tightened around a fuel-line umbilical at the base of the rocket to improve sealing and prevent leaks like one that briefly occurred Monday.
“We agreed on what was called ‘option 1,’ which was to operationally change the (fuel) loading procedure and start our engine chilldown earlier,” Sarafin said. “We also agreed to do some work at the pad to address the leak that we saw at the hydrogen tail service mast umbilical.
“And we also agreed to move our launch date to Saturday. We are going to reconvene the Mission Management Team on Thursday to review our flight rationale and our overall readiness.”
The 322-foot-tall 5.75-million-pound SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, generating 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff using four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines left over from the shuttle program and two Northrop Grumman solid rocket boosters attached to a Boeing-built core stage.
Accelerating to 70 mph — straight up — in just seven seconds, the the SRBs and the core stage will boost the Orion capsule, carrying instrumented test dummies and a suite of sensors and experiments, into an elliptical orbit. The rocket’s upper stage, provided by United Launch Alliance, then will propel the capsule out of Earth’s gravity and onto a trajectory to the moon.
After a close flyby, the capsule will whip around the moon and out into a distant orbit that will carry it farther from Earth than any human-rated spacecraft. Then, after another lunar flyby, the ship will head back to Earth for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of San Diego on October 11.
The goal of the Artemis 1 mission is to put the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft through their paces, including a high-speed, high-temperature re-entry, before launching four astronauts around the moon in late 2024. The first Artemis moon landing is planned for the 2025-26 timeframe.
Given the constantly changing positions of the Earth and moon, along with the rocket’s ability to reach the correct trajectory, NASA must launch the Artemis 1 mission within specific “windows.”
Complicating the picture, the battery used by the upper stage’s self-destruct system must be serviced after 25 days, and that can only be done back in NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building.
That means the Artemis 1 mission must get off the ground by Monday or the rocket will be hauled back to the VAB, delaying another launch attempt until late September at the earliest or, more likely, to October.
The SLS rocket is the key to the Artemis program and NASA managers and engineers want to make sure it works as planned before launching astronauts to the moon.
A full-duration eight-minute core stage engine test firing was carried out at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi on March 18, 2021. The rocket then was shipped to the Kennedy Space Center for launch processing.
NASA carried out a dress-rehearsal countdown and fueling test on April 3, a key milestone needed to make sure the rocket, launch pad and ground systems work together as planned. But engineers ran into a series of mostly ground-system problems that prevented them from loading propellants,
Two more fueling attempts failed on April 4 and 14 due to a variety of unrelated problems. Engineers were finally able to fully load the core stage on June 20, but only after a leaking quick-disconnect fitting was isolated that prevented the flow of hydrogen coolant to the core stage engines — a requirement for an actual launch.
The quick-disconnect was repaired back in the Vehicle Assembly Building and the SLS rocket was rolled back out to pad 39B on August 16 to ready the vehicle for launch.
During Monday’s launch attempt, the repaired quick-disconnect appeared to work normally. With the core stage tanks filled and topped off, liquid oxygen and hydrogen began circulating through the engine plumbing to condition them to the ultra-low temperatures of the propellants.
But none of the engines reached the target temperature of -420 degrees Fahrenheit. Engines 1, 2 and 4 got to about -410 degrees while engine No. 3 only reached about -380 degrees. During troubleshooting, engineers diverted all the hydrogen coolant to engine 3 and it still did not reach the planned operating temperature.
John Honeycutt, manager of the SLS program at the Marshall Spaceflight Center, said engineers suspect a faulty sensor might be responsible for the readings from engine 3. Pressure measurements and other data indicate good cooling.
“The way the sensor is behaving, it doesn’t line up with the physics of the situation,” he said. “And so we will be looking at all the other data that we have to use it to make an informed decision whether or not we’ve got all the engines chilled down or not.”
By starting the chilldown procedure about 45 minutes earlier when the engines are near ambient temperatures, engineers believe they can manage to cool all four engines as needed.
A similar procedure was used during the rocket’s test firing last year at the Stennis Space Center. In that case, the engines were properly cooled and started normally for a full-duration “green run.”
“As of today, and based on the data that we’ve got, we think we can do something like what we did at the Stennis Space Center to put ourselves in a better position for launch,” said Honeycutt.
As Sarafin said, the team will review all the data Thursday before giving final clearance to proceed with a launch attempt.
“The team is in the middle of poring through the data and building the flight rationale,” Honeycutt said. “I don’t have that just yet, but I do expect us to be able to get there.”

  239 Hits

Live coverage: SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites from California

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 46 Starlink internet satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

SpaceX Webcast

SpaceX Mission Audio

  202 Hits

SLS launch scrubbed after weather delay, engine cooling issue

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

Continue reading
  286 Hits

Countdown begins for maiden launch of Artemis moon rocket

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

Continue reading
  196 Hits

Live coverage: NASA’s powerful Artemis 1 moon rocket counting down to first flight

Live coverage of the countdown and maiden flight of the Space Launch System on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

SFN Live

  240 Hits

Artemis 1 flight to moon depends on precision rocket firings to pull off a complex trajectory

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

Continue reading
  326 Hits

Photos: Aerial survey of Kennedy Space Center on the eve of Artemis 1

NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket stands on Launch Complex 39B, behind the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Spaceflight Now

Spaceflight Now took an aerial tour around the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the days before the scheduled launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket. These images captured by Walter Scriptunas II show the the powerful moon rocket on its launch pad, plus SpaceX’s ongoing work to ready the spaceport for the huge commercial Starship rocket.

Continue reading
  269 Hits

NASA’s most powerful rocket poised for launch on historic Artemis 1 moon mission

NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket stands on pad 39B. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Five decades after the final flight of NASA’s legendary Saturn 5 moon rocket, the U.S. space agency is poised to launch its most powerful rocket yet Monday for a critical, long-overdue test flight, sending an unpiloted Orion crew capsule on a 42-day voyage around the moon.

Continue reading
  222 Hits

Live coverage: SpaceX ready for launch at Cape Canaveral on eve of Artemis 1

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Starlink 4-23 mission will launch SpaceX’s next batch of 54 Starlink broadband satellites. Follow us on Twitter.

Continue reading
  244 Hits

NASA, Boeing target February for first crew flight on Starliner spacecraft

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft approaches the International Space Station for docking May 20 on the unpiloted Orbital Flight Test-2 mission. Credit: NASA

NASA and Boeing have penciled a launch date in February for the first piloted test flight of the Starliner commercial crew capsule, allowing time to implement fixes on the spacecraft after an unpiloted demo to the International Space Station earlier this year.

Continue reading
  181 Hits

Orion crew module hatch closed for Artemis 1 test flight

NASA’s Orion spacecraft on top of the Space Launch System moon rocket. The crew access arm and white room connecting to the Orion spacecraft’s hatch are visible near the top of the picture. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now

The Orion crew module hatch was closed for flight Thursday morning after technicians at pad 39B completed final closeouts and outfitting inside the spacecraft before launch next week on the unpiloted Artemis 1 test flight around the moon.

Continue reading
  224 Hits

SpaceZE.com