Firefly planned to send its Alpha rocket to orbit on a test flight early Friday morning (Sept. 30), and it ticked off a lot of boxes along the way — including engine ignition.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Earth from Space: Melt ponds in West Greenland
During spring and summer, as the air warms up and the sun beats down on the Greenland Ice Sheet, melt ponds pop up. Melt ponds are vast pools of open water that form on both sea ice and ice sheets and are visible as turquoise-blue pools of water in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image.
New weather satellite on its way to launch
Video: 00:04:04
The final pre-launch preparations for the first Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellite are underway. The first satellite, called MTG-I1, built by a European industrial consortium led by Thales Alenia Space carries two imagers: an advanced Flexible Combined Imager and, in a first for Europe, a Lightning Imager that will allow the earlier detection of storms and extreme weather events, as well as improve aviation safety.
Mysterious Europa Gets an Extreme Closeup From NASA’s Juno Probe
Over the course of a brief two-hour opportunity, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a rare close look at Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter that’s thought to harbor a hidden ocean — and perhaps an extraterrestrial strain of marine life.
The Moon was Pummeled by Asteroids at the Same Time the Dinosaurs Died. Coincidence?
It only takes a quick look at the Moon to see its impact-beaten surface. There are craters everywhere. Some of those impact sites apparently date back to the same time some very large asteroids were whacking Earth. One of them formed Chixculub Crater under the Yucatan Peninsula. That impact set in motion catastrophic events that wiped out much of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
Live coverage: Firefly ready for middle-of-the-night launch from California
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of Firefly’s Alpha rocket on the “To the Black” test flight with seven small nanosatellites and picosatellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
SpaceX, NASA look at launching Dragon to service Hubble Space Telescope
Astronauts could visit the Hubble Space Telescope again someday, this time on a SpaceX Dragon.
SpaceX, NASA studying commercial crew mission to Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope in the payload bay of space shuttle Atlantis during the last servicing mission in May 2009. Credit: NASA
NASA and SpaceX will study the potential use of a commercial Dragon crew spacecraft to reboost and service the Hubble Space Telescope, a 32-year-old observatory last upgraded by a space shuttle in 2009, officials announced Thursday.
DART Impact Seen by Hubble and Webb
What happens when you whack a little asteroid with an even littler spacecraft? People around the world watched on the 26th of September when the DART mission smashed into the side of Dimorphos. This tiny worldlet is a companion asteroid to Didymos. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by modifying its orbit. Amateur observer networks and professional observatories tracked the meetup from the ground. In a first, both Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took simultaneous images and data.
NASA and SpaceX Will Study Low-Cost Plan to Give Hubble a Boost
NASA and SpaceX say they’ll conduct a feasibility study into a plan to reboost the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to a more sustainable orbit, potentially at little or no cost to NASA.
The First Telescope Images of DART's Impact are Starting to Arrive
On September 26th, at 23:14 UTC (07:14 PM EST; 04:14 PM PST), NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft successfully struck the 160-meter (525 ft) moonlet Dimorphos that orbits the larger Didymos asteroid. The event was live-streamed all around the world and showed footage from DART’s Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) as it rapidly approached Dimorphos. In the last few seconds, DART was close enough that individual boulders could be seen on the moonlet’s surface.
Firefly ready for another try to launch test flight of smallsat rocket
Firefly’s Alpha rocket stands on its launch pad Sept. 29 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: Brian Sandoval / Spaceflight Now
After a delay of several weeks due to technical issues, bad weather, and a busy launch range, Firefly Aerospace is set to try again early Friday to send its commercial small satellite launcher into orbit on a test flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Ingenuity Mars helicopter notches 33rd Red Planet flight
NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has taken flight again, staying aloft for nearly a minute this past weekend on its 33rd extraterrestrial sortie.
Russian Soyuz brings three cosmonauts home from space station
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION
DART asteroid crash seen by James Webb, Hubble space telescopes (photos)
The James Webb Space Telescope and its older counterpart Hubble photographed the impact of NASA's asteroid-smashing DART probe into the space rock Dimorphos on Monday (Sept. 26).
Watch SpaceX, NASA and Hubble officials discuss mysterious new study today
NASA, SpaceX and Hubble officials will hold a press conference today (Sept. 29) to discuss "potential commercial space opportunities for NASA science missions," and you can watch it live.
SOFIA Airborne Observatory Has Taken Its Final Flight
The flying observatory has been grounded due to its lofty price-tag and questionable productivity, causing an outcry among astronomers
Astronaut looks inside eye of Hurricane Ian from space as storm weakens over Florida (photos)
An International Space Station astronaut photographed Hurricane Ian as the powerful storm battered Florida. NASA, SpaceX and others have postponed launches from the Space Coast.
Testing Time for Mars
Swiss watch brand Omega has teamed up with ESA to launch the Marstimer: the first watch to display the time on Earth and Mars. Developed in partnership with ESA’s Mars exploration teams and tested at ESA ESTEC, this new watch is space-tough and Mars-mission ready.
Robots Might Jump Around to Explore the Moon
How great are wheels, really? Wheels need axles. Suspension. Power of some kind. And roads, or at least swaths of relatively flat and stable terrain. Then you need to maintain all of it. Because of their cost many civilizations across human history, who knew all about wheels and axles, didn’t bother using them for transportation. Another way to look at it – much of human technology mimics nature. Of the simple machines, levers, inclined planes, wedges, and even screws are observed in nature. Why not the wheel?
RoboCop streaming guide: Where to watch the RoboCop movies online
Practice that pistol twirling and poke out that strong chin, here's how to watch the RoboCop movies online for the maximum amount of justice.
