William Harwood – Page 32 – Spaceflight Now

Boe pulled from commercial crew test flight due to medical issue

January 22, 2019 William Harwood

Eric Boe, one of three astronauts assigned to the first piloted test flight of a Boeing CST-100 Starliner commercial crew ship later this year has been removed from the mission due to unspecified medical issues, NASA announced Tuesday. He will be replaced by veteran astronaut Mike Fincke.

SpaceX plans to lay off 10 percent of workforce

January 11, 2019 William Harwood

SpaceX, the upstart rocket company that has shaken up the launch industry with low-cost reusable boosters and ambitious long-range plans to carry people to Mars and beyond, plans to reduce its workforce by about 10 percent, company sources said late Friday.

New Horizons phones home, confirms successful flyby

January 1, 2019 William Harwood

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft raced past a frozen remnant of the solar system’s birth early New Year’s Day, phoned home to confirm a successful flyby and readied a treasure trove of pictures and other data for transmission back to eager scientists some 4.1 billion miles away.

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.

Crew of three safely lands in Kazakhstan after 197-day space mission

December 20, 2018 William Harwood

A Russian cosmonaut, a German flight engineer and a NASA astronaut undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth overnight Wednesday, landing on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan to wrap up a six-month mission.

Station crew set for overnight landing in Kazakhstan

December 19, 2018 William Harwood

Eight days after a dramatic spacewalk to inspect the site of a leak in the hull of his Soyuz ferry ship, Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, German flight engineer Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor geared up to depart the International Space Station Wednesday for a fiery plunge back to Earth.

SpaceX Falcon 9 boosts Dragon cargo ship to orbit, first stage misses landing target

December 5, 2018 William Harwood

Two days after a successful launch from California, SpaceX fired off another Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Wednesday, this one carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with 5,660 pounds of equipment and supplies bound for the International Space Station.

Soyuz crew enjoys problem-free launch, docks with space station

December 3, 2018 William Harwood

A Soyuz FG rocket thundered to life and shot into orbit smoothly Monday carrying three crew members on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station. The problem-free ascent came less than two months after an Oct. 11 launch abort that forced a different crew to carry out safe-but-scary emergency landing.

Mars lander on course for Monday touchdown

November 25, 2018 William Harwood

After a six-month voyage from Earth, NASA’s InSight Mars lander, streaking through space at at some 12,300 mph, will slam into the thin martian atmosphere Monday afternoon to begin a nail-biting six-and-a-half-minute descent to the surface, kicking off a billion-dollar mission to probe the red planet’s hidden interior.

NASA announces target date for first SpaceX Crew Dragon flight

November 21, 2018 William Harwood

SpaceX is targeting Jan. 7 for launch of its first Crew Dragon commercial ferry ship on an unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station, NASA announced Wednesday, a major milestone in the agency’s drive to end its sole reliance on Russian Soyuz crew ships for carrying astronauts to orbit.