NASA is pressing ahead with Artemis moon program revisions to give the agency its best shot at a lunar landing in 2028 using a lander built by either Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, depending on which one testing indicates is the right choice, officials said Friday. The strategy is intended to provide…
Japan launched an ambitious $350 million mission to Mars on Monday to study the red planet’s two moons in unprecedented detail, dropping a small rover on the largest — Phobos — before the mothership touches down to robotically collect soil samples for return to Earth. The primary goal of the Martian Moons Exploration mission, or…
NASA is working with Boeing to launch an unpiloted Starliner capsule in the December-to-January time frame to test upgrades and improvements ordered in the wake of a 2024 mission that suffered multiple propulsion system failures, stranding two astronauts on the space station for more than nine months. If the unpiloted test flight goes well, NASA…
SpaceX launched the company’s Super Heavy-Starship on its first flight to orbit Monday, a major step toward perfecting the world’s most powerful rocket for commercial flights and NASA moon missions. The Starship upper stage lost an engine during ascent, but after some discussion, flight controllers cleared it to continue on to orbit. With 13 suborbital…
Artemis astronaut Jeremy Hansen described the crew’s recent return to Earth as “the best roller coaster ride you’ve ever been on.” “For the landing, it’s like all the sights, all the feels,” Hansen said Friday at a “CBS Mornings” town hall, “Artemis II: A Celebration of Heroes.” “The first thing you see is like plasma,…
SpaceX launched its 13th Super Heavy-Starship rocket Friday, with the giant booster chalking up an on-target but “hard” splashdown off the Texas Gulf Coast while the Starship upper stage carried out a successful suborbital hop to the Indian Ocean. Powered by 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines, the 397-foot-tall two-stage rocket blasted off from SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas,…
