With a commitment from the Obama administration finally in hand after more than a decade of studies and concept papers, NASA expects to give the green light this year for development of a robotic probe to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa that could launch as soon as 2022.
The largest solid rocket booster in the world, an extended version of the space shuttle motor, will be test-fired in Utah on Wednesday to check its qualifications to be part of NASA’s new heavy-lift Space Launch System.
Mission leaders Tuesday gave approval for rollout of the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Wednesday morning, leading to liftoff Thursday night of the Magnetospheric Multiscale science project for NASA.
Three months into an interplanetary cruise expected to last three-and-a-half years, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe is in good health as it begins an ion-powered pursuit of an asteroid to return a piece of it to Earth.
The next launch in SpaceX’s busy manifest this year is scheduled for March 21, when a Falcon 9 rocket will take off from Cape Canaveral and deliver Turkmenistan’s first satellite into orbit.
A $1.1 billion science investigation involving four formation-flying satellites circling the Earth will share a single Atlas 5 rocket launch Thursday night from Cape Canaveral to probe explosions in the magnetic field with millisecond speed.
The preliminary weather outlook for Thursday night’s Atlas 5 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral is cloudy but optimistic that the vehicle will fly as scheduled.
SES has selected Arianespace to launch a communications satellite ordered as part of a three-spacecraft procurement announced last month, after assigning the other two payloads for launches aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.
NASA has ordered four additional launches to deliver cargo to the International Space Station in 2017 — three from SpaceX and one from Orbital ATK — to cover the research lab’s logistics needs until a new set of resupply contracts take effect.