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Mission Reports
Live coverage: NASA’s ICON satellite successfully launched
After a 24-hour delay due to poor weather, an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket fired into orbit at 9:59 p.m. EDT Thursday (0159 GMT Friday) after release from a carrier jet at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral. The Pegasus rocket carried NASA’s ICON satellite into orbit to collect measurements of the ionosphere.
Mission Reports
Live coverage: Proton rocket launches with two U.S.-built satellites
A Russian Proton rocket lifted off at 1017 GMT (6:17 a.m. EDT) Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodorme in Kazakhstan. After a marathon 16-hour-long launch sequence, the Proton and its Breeze M upper stage will deploy the Eutelsat 5 West B video broadcast satellite and a robotic satellite servicing payload aiming to attempt the first-ever docking in geosynchronous orbit.
Mission Reports
Pegasus rocket ready for airborne launch with NASA scientific satellite
After a year-long delay to troubleshoot recurring erroneous data signatures from the rudder of Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket, NASA is eager to send a $252 million research satellite into orbit as soon as Thursday night off Florida’s east coast on a mission to probe the ionosphere, a region near the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
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NASA opens competition to build human-rated lunar landers
Companies have until Nov. 1 to submit proposals to NASA for a human-rated lander that could be ready in time to carry astronauts to the moon’s surface by the end of 2024, and the agency is leaving open the option for contractors to develop a descent craft that would bypass the planned Gateway mini-space station in lunar orbit, at least for the first landing attempt.
Mission Reports
Mission Reports
Mission Reports
Astronauts complete extra work on first in series of battery upgrade spacewalks
Astronauts Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan floated outside the International Space Station Sunday and completed a 7-hour, 1-minute spacewalk to begin replacing batteries on the far left side of the research outpost’s solar array truss, the first of up to six excursions scheduled before the end of October.
Mission Reports
First all-female spacewalk on tap later this month
After a spacesuit sizing problem prevented an all-female spacewalk earlier this year, astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will get a chance to make history Oct. 21 when they venture outside the International Space Station in the fourth of five excursions to install a new set of solar array batteries, NASA managers announced Friday.