The first images of Blue Ghost are on the lunar surface
NASA has successfully landed its Blue Ghost mission on the Moon, making it the second private mission to land on the Moon after Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus last year. Blue Ghost is a lunar lander designed for human exploration, with a drill and a ‘vac planet’ to scoop the lunar dirt. This is also the first time a private mission has landed on the Moon.
The astronauts say being stuck in space is just part of their job
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stranded on International Space Station because of technical issues with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, said that being stuck in space is “just part of the job”. They added that with more time they could have returned to Earth on the Starliner. “The people at NASA make a lot of things look easy,” they further said.
Boeing is preparing to launch a NASA crew into space
Boeing’s Starliner, which will be carrying two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, will be launched on May 6 in a joint launch with NASA. The Starliner will be crewed by NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who will head to the International Space Station. Boeing has received $4.2 billion for Starliner and was the first company to partner with NASA.
The first US Moon landing has been more than 50 years in the making
The US has become the first country to land a private mission on the Moon after Odysseus, a solar-powered spacecraft, landed on the lunar surface on Wednesday. NASA paid for much of the private mission, but is counting on companies like Intuitive Machines to help bring equipment to the Moon in order to get astronauts back there.
A private company is about to land on the moon
Intuitive Machines’ ‘Odysseus’ lander, the first private spacecraft to land on Moon, touched down at the lunar south pole on Wednesday morning. The mission is a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, which aims to collect important data about the Moon’s surface. Odysseus had launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last week.
NASA’s new observatory searches for clues to the future
NASA’s new satellite ‘PACE’ has been launched on an Indian rocket which is expected to travel to the Earth’s orbit in late 2019. It will help understand the role of ocean and atmosphere in global warming and climate change. The mission, which is the first-ever science mission dedicated to oceans and atmospheric Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) project, was launched on Friday.
The US launches its first moon-bound lander
NASA launched the first mission to land a private space company’s robotic lander on the Moon. The mission is called ‘Artemis’ and it aims to return humans to the Moon’s surface within the next few years. The mission is the first through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which the agency pays private companies to deliver scientific instruments to the Moon’s surface.
The second test of the Starship ended in an explosion a few minutes after launch
SpaceX’s Starship failed its test flight on October 23, when the automated flight termination system triggered following a loss of contact with the craft about 10 minutes into its flight. NASA’s Human Landing System Program head, Lisa Watson-Morgan, told Ars Technica that the launch will be a great learning event. The Starship launch was originally scheduled to take place on November 17.
NASA collected a sample from a asteroid for the first time
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully landed on asteroid Bennu after a 6.4-year journey. It landed on the asteroid, which is about 90 million km from Earth, to sample and return the asteroid’s surface pebbles. If found to be intact, that would be the biggest haul of extraterrestrial material carried back by any nation on Earth since Apollo astronauts carried pieces of the moon home.
This weekend is the last chance for NASA to bring home asteroids
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which will return asteroid rock samples to Earth, is on track to reach the target on October 2, the space agency has announced. The mission will collect samples from an asteroid nicknamed ‘Asteroid X’ that is roughly the size of a medium-sized sedan. NASA’s Psyche mission will launch in October to another asteroid called ‘Phosphorus’.