NASA has formally approved plans — a year ahead of schedule — for an infrared space telescope launching around 2024 to record unique wide-angle views of the cosmos, seeking answers to questions about mysterious dark energy and searching for habitable worlds around other stars.
Japan launched a pioneering observatory with X-ray vision Wednesday to peer into the mysterious, light-starved neighborhoods around black holes and study the genesis of galaxies and other cosmic mega-structures billions of light-years from Earth.
A Soviet-era missile originally built to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States in wartime fired into space for a much different purpose Tuesday, carrying a European environmental satellite into orbit to help track the effects of climate change.
Japan’s Astro-H mission, an X-ray astronomy observatory designed to shed light on black holes and the unseen structure of the universe, lifted off aboard an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center at 0845 GMT (3:45 a.m. EST) Wednesday.
Soaring into the night sky over a guarded Russian military base, a 1.2-ton European satellite rocketed into orbit Tuesday to regularly measure how the world’s oceans and ice sheets respond to climate change and drive global weather patterns.
A European environmental satellite launched Tuesday from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome to begin a mission of at least seven years measuring the height, color and temperature of the world’s oceans. The Sentinel 3A spacecraft lifted off aboard a Rockot booster at 1757 GMT (12:57 p.m. EST).
Delays in the debut of SpaceX’s huge Falcon Heavy rocket have prompted ViaSat to move the launch of a high-speed Internet communications satellite from the new privately-developed booster to an Ariane 5 flight in early 2017, officials said last week.
Russian rocket technicians fueled a decommissioned ballistic missile with propellants Monday, a day ahead of the launch of a European satellite primed to observe the planet’s oceans.
Europe’s Sentinel 3A satellite, designed for real-time surveys of the world’s oceans, ice sheets, lakes and rivers, is attached to a decommissioned Russian nuclear missile for launch Tuesday. These photos show the spacecraft’s final prelaunch preparations.
The Japanese space agency said Thursday the launch of an X-ray astrophysics observatory is postponed from Friday due to a poor weather forecast at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.