News Archive
Browse every article published on Spaceflight Now, from launch reports and mission previews to spacecraft development coverage. Use the filters to narrow by topic or search by keyword.
Matching Articles
95 articles
NASA gears up for brisk launch pace, starting with weather satellite
Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center tasked with overseeing launches of scientific satellites and interplanetary probes will be responsible later this year for ensuring six major missions safely get into space over a span of a little more than six months, beginning with the launch of NOAA's new GOES-S weather observatory on an Atlas 5 rocket March 1.
SpaceX informed NASA of slowdown in its commercial Mars program
Confirming rumors and suspicions that SpaceX is adjusting its plans to begin dispatching robotic landers to Mars, NASA officials said the commercial space company has informed the agency that it has put its Red Dragon program on the back burner.
NASA to have limited role in SpaceX’s planned Mars campaign
Expertise, input and advice from seasoned NASA engineers will improve SpaceX's chances of nailing the first commercial landing on Mars as soon as late 2018, a senior space agency official said Wednesday, but Elon Musk's space transport company will likely seek more independence from U.S. government support on later expeditions to the red planet.
NASA spells out support for SpaceX’s Red Dragon Mars mission
If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on an untested Mars landing scheme a decade sooner than NASA could do it, space agency officials said this week.
SpaceX announces plan to send mission to Mars in 2018
Elon Musk's space transport company -- chartered with a long-term goal of colonizing Mars -- plans to send the first commercial mission to the red planet as soon as 2018, SpaceX announced Wednesday.
Jason 3 satellite begins surveying world’s oceans
Two months after its foggy blastoff from California on a Falcon 9 rocket, a $364 million oceanography satellite has returned the first data from its radar altimeter mapping global sea levels, catching this year's ongoing El Niño in the act.
Satellite launched to measure motions of the oceans
A new satellite built to extend a 24-year series of joint U.S.-European ocean observatories climbed away from a foggy California launch pad and sailed into orbit more than 800 miles above Earth on Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Live coverage: Falcon 9 launches ocean study satellite, barge landing fails
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Central Coast at 10:42:18 a.m. PST (1:42:18 p.m. EST; 1842:18 GMT) Sunday with the Jason 3 oceanography satellite. A secondary objective of the mission to recover the first stage on a barge in the Pacific Ocean failed.
Photos: Falcon 9 poised on hillside launch pad in California
The first Falcon 9 flight of 2016 is ready for takeoff Sunday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and these photos show the rocket positioned on its launch mount overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Launch timeline for Falcon 9/Jason 3 mission
Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket's ascent to orbit with the Jason 3 satellite, a joint project between European and U.S. weather agencies to monitor wave height and sea level in the world's oceans.