December 2018 – Spaceflight Now

OSIRIS-REx completes New Year’s Eve orbit insertion burn at asteroid

December 31, 2018 Stephen Clark

After four weeks of navigating in the vicinity of asteroid Bennu, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its thrusters for eight seconds Monday to slip into orbit around the carbon-rich object, making Bennu the smallest planetary body ever orbited by a spacecraft.

Video: Marc Buie, New Horizons Occultation Team Lead (members only)

December 31, 2018 Spaceflight Now

Marc Buie, Occultation Team Lead, reveals what we know so far about the shape of Ultima Thule as New Horizons races towards its encounter with the Kuiper Belt object.

On eve of New Horizons flyby, Ultima Thule still holding onto its mysteries

December 30, 2018 Stephen Clark

A day before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft closes in on a frozen outpost nicknamed Ultima Thule 4.1 billion miles from Earth, basic facts about the city-sized object continued to elude scientists Sunday as the ground team braced for a deluge of data and imagery that should unmask the unexplored world at the frontier of the solar system.

Video: Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager, previews Ultima Thule flyby (members only)

December 30, 2018 Stephen Clark

New Horizons’s mission operations manager Alice Bowman previews the spacecraft’s New Year’s Day encounter with Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt, a distant zone of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune.

China debuts new upper stage in final launch of the year

December 30, 2018 Stephen Clark

A Chinese Long March 2D booster climbed into orbit from the Jiuquan space base in the northwest of the country Saturday, delivering seven small satellites to space on communications and weather research missions with the help of a new upper stage capable of firing more than 20 times over two days.

Live coverage: New Horizons flyby target comes into focus

December 30, 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a historic New Year’s encounter with an object nicknamed Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt a billion miles beyond Pluto. The NASA space probe passed Ultima Thule at a distance of around 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on Jan. 1, making it the most distant planetary body ever explored up close.

Delta 4-Heavy launch with spy satellite pushed back to January

December 28, 2018 Stephen Clark

After unusual concentrations of hydrogen around the rocket foiled a launch attempt Dec. 19, United Launch Alliance said Friday that the company’s powerful Delta 4-Heavy launcher and a U.S. government spy satellite will remain grounded in California until at least Jan. 6 as engineers troubleshoot a small fuel leak.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft heads for New Year’s encounter with distant world

December 28, 2018 William Harwood

Three years and a billion miles past Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons probe is on the verge of at least one more pioneering, once-in-a-lifetime milestone: a New Year’s Day flyby of a small body known as 2014 MU69, unofficially dubbed Ultima Thule — “beyond the known world” — in a NASA naming contest.

China launches two more Long March rockets; another possible before end of year

December 28, 2018 Stephen Clark

China’s space program is sprinting toward the end of the year by extending the country’s record-breaking launch rate, with two more space missions lifting off in the last week carrying a pathfinder for a planned constellation of Internet satellites and a mysterious payload heading for geostationary orbit. At least one more Long March rocket is set to lift off Saturday to close out 2018.

Soyuz launches cluster of 28 satellites

December 27, 2018 Stephen Clark

A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East on Thursday carrying 28 satellites, including a pair of Russian mapping satellites, secondary payloads from Germany, Japan, Spain, South Africa, and a dozen Earth-observing CubeSats and eight commercial weather payloads for Planet and Spire.