Space News

60 years ago today, the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer!

Today is the Spring Equinox when both hemispheres receive an equal amount of sunlight through the day!

Blue Origin just released the first CGI concept video for how the New Glenn launch vehicle (under development) will bring cargo up to low Earth orbit, and how its first stage will land.  Very similar to the SpaceX Falcon 9 architecture, albeit on a larger scale and with more legs!

A true pioneer has been lost. John Glenn has passed away at the age of 95. He was one of the original 'Mercury 7' astronauts during the birth of NASA, the first American in orbit during the flight of Friendship 7 in 1962, the oldest person in space as a payload specialist during STS-95 in 1998 at the age of 77, and US Senator from 1974-1999.

(Screen capture by Emily Lakdawalla)

RIP Rosetta/Philae (2004-2016)  Your science will live on, and hopefully some future explorers centuries from now will find you resting safely on Comet 67P.  

Ultraviolet observations using the Hubble Space Telescope have found great evidence for water plume eruptions from the southern hemisphere of Europa!  The UV is in blue, with a visible map of Europa overplotted.   

The Moon Express just got FAA approval for being the first commercial mission to land on the moon!  Best of luck!

Sad news, as JAXA stops their attempts to recover the Hitomi X-ray telescope in Earth orbit.  The telescope is believed to have spun out of control and lost its solar panels.  Details are scarce on how the spin was started, but the loss of the panels means that Hitomi can’t power itself or communicate with Earth.

SpaceX announced plans to send an unmanned Red Dragon capsule to Mars in order to test landing and interplanetary travel.  The Red Dragon would be too small to host astronauts for the 200 days to get to Mars, so this is an engineering test first.  NASA will be collaborating and receiving data from SpaceX about the landing.  2018 is the earliest Mars window SpaceX could make, but if delayed, they still have opportunities in 2020 and beyond.

After a 24 hr delay due to a computer auto-abort to check the rocket, a Soyuz with 3 satellites launched 10:01 p.m. EDT April 27th while under observation by Russian President Vladimir Putin.  This marks the first launch from Vostochny, which was constructed in order to lessen Russia’s dependence on  Kazakhstan.

Here’s a great write up of Challenger’s crew, 30 years after their loss.

LISA Pathfinder, a testbed for the newest gravitational wave detection technologies, was succesfully launched!  If the measurements this satellite takes are good enough, the full LISA array would get a huge boost.

The International Space Station has been crewed for a continuous 15 years. Nearly an entire generation has grown up with a successful base in space above their heads!

ExoMars 2016, an ESA robotic mission to orbit and land on mars has been delayed by 2 months from Jan-March 2016 to fix sensors which would have recorded data during the entry and landing phase.  The landing probe is expected to report back data of the Martian atmosphere as it descends and data from the surface for the 8 days the probe is expected to survive.

Amazon CEO and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos announced that construction and flight of their manned New Shepard capsule will take place in Florida, adding several hundred jobs to the state’s economy.  Also teased was the designs for a reusable vertical landing first stage, much like SpaceX’s Falcon series.