Stephen Clark – Page 308 – Spaceflight Now

All systems go for launch of InSight, a mission to reveal the inside of Mars

May 4, 2018 Stephen Clark

Scientists eager for answers to long-standing questions about the geology of Mars will get a lift Saturday with the blastoff from California of an Atlas 5 rocket with NASA’s InSight mission, a robotic landing craft that will take the pulse and temperature of the red planet.

Time-lapse video: First Falcon 9 Block 5 arrives at pad 39A for hotfire test

May 3, 2018 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, sporting changes to make the booster easier to reuse, rolled out of its hangar and up the ramp to launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday ahead of a planned hold-down engine firing.

Q&A with Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator on NASA’s InSight mission (members only)

May 3, 2018 Stephen Clark

Bruce Banerdt leads the InSight science team, and is in charge of the lander heading for Mars to study the red planet’s interior structure, collecting data that should yield new information about the environment in the early solar system, when planets coalesced and formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Live coverage: InSight Mars mission lifts off from California aboard Atlas 5 rocket

May 3, 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA’s InSight spacecraft, the next lander to head for Mars, lifted off Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. Launch occurred in a blanket of fog at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT; 1105 GMT).

Live coverage: Upgraded Falcon 9 rocket test-fired at pad 39A

May 3, 2018 Stephen Clark

SpaceX conducted the first hold-down firing of an upgraded version of the Falcon 9 rocket Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in preparation for launch next week with Bangladesh’s first communications satellite.

Firefly’s commercial satellite launcher to use Delta 2 pad at Vandenberg

May 2, 2018 Stephen Clark

A commercial rocket under development by Firefly Aerospace will conduct its first orbital test flight in 2019 from a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California that will become vacant with the retirement of the venerable Delta 2 booster later this year, the company announced Tuesday.

Dragon cargo craft’s return to Earth delayed to Saturday

May 1, 2018 Stephen Clark

A commercial Dragon cargo capsule will remain at the International Space Station until Saturday, three days later than previously planned due to high sea states observed by the SpaceX recovery team in the spaceship’s splashdown zone in the Pacific Ocean.

Managers clear InSight for launch after heat shield review

May 1, 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA officials have determined that the robotic InSight lander is ready for its mission to Mars after concluding that the probe should not suffer the same flaw that led to a crack in a heat shield undergoing tests for the space agency’s Mars 2020 rover, InSight’s chief scientist said Monday.

NASA cancels lunar rover, shifts focus to commercial moon landers

May 1, 2018 Stephen Clark

As NASA turns up support for future commercial lunar landers, the space agency last week canceled a mission that would have placed a rover on the moon to survey resources, such as water and helium, that could be used by future human explorers.

Video: Blue Origin flies New Shepard rocket for eighth time

April 29, 2018 Stephen Clark

Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster, topped with a capsule carrying a dummy dubbed Mannequin Skywalker, took off Sunday from the company’s sprawling test site in West Texas on a 10-minute trip to the edge of space and back.