Month: September 2022

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has collected and stored samples of rocks at the base of an ancient river delta fanning out from the rim of Jezero Crater made up of minerals and organic compounds that, on Earth, would likely preserve traces of past microbial life, researchers said Sept. 15.

Rocket Lab’s 30th mission delivered the StriX 1 radar imaging satellite into orbit for the Japanese Earth observation company Synspective, beginning the deployment of a constellation of 30 commercial radar satellites planned over the next four years.

Rocket Lab launched its 30th mission at 4:38 p.m. EDT (2038 GMT) Thursday from New Zealand. The payload on-board Rocket Lab’s small-class Electron launcher was the StriX 1 radar remote sensing satellite for the Japanese company Synspective.

Rocket Lab is set to launch its 30th mission from New Zealand Thursday with a commercial Japanese radar remote sensing satellite. While the company does not plan to retrieve the Electron rocket on this mission, engineers recently test-fired an engine recovered from a flight earlier this year, another step toward Rocket Lab’s goal of reusing first stage boosters.

Firefly Aerospace says teams will try again Sept. 29 to launch its second Alpha rocket from California after scrubbing back-to-back launch attempts due to a helium pressure issue and unfavorable wind conditions.

Ground teams will try to stabilize the motion of NASA’s small CAPSTONE scouting satellite and rescue the $30 million mission on the way to the moon, following a problem Sept. 8 that sent the spacecraft into a tumble and caused controllers to temporarily lose contact with the probe, officials said Monday.

The suborbital rocket developed by Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin suffered its first launch failure Monday, when the main engine on the New Shepard booster appeared to cut out about a minute after liftoff from West Texas. The crew capsule, which carried NASA-funded experiments but no people, safely landed under parachutes after firing an abort motor to escape the stricken booster.