Astrophysics – Spaceflight Now

NASA says goodbye to Kepler planet-hunter

November 18, 2018

Ground controllers have beamed the final commands to NASA’s Kepler telescope, turning off the spacecraft’s transmitters and disabling the craft’s automatic recovery software after the planet-hunting observatory ran out of fuel last month.

NASA’s trailblazing Kepler telescope ends planet hunt

October 30, 2018

NASA’s Kepler telescope has run out of fuel and ended science operations, closing out a pioneering decade-long mission that showed planets are commonplace across our galaxy, agency officials said Tuesday.

Hubble Space Telescope in safe mode with gyro trouble

October 9, 2018

NASA has suspended science operations with the Hubble Space Telescope and put the observatory into protective “safe mode” while engineers troubleshoot problems with one of the spacecraft’s three remaining gyroscopes, used to help aim the telescope and keep it locked on target, officials said Monday.

Dwindling fuel levels and a balky thruster can’t keep Kepler down

September 7, 2018

After downloading science data and bypassing a balky thruster, NASA’s Kepler mission has resumed its search for planets around other stars after a two-month pause in observations, but engineers expect the spacecraft to soon run out of fuel.

TESS’s planet hunt begins

July 27, 2018

NASA’s newest observatory in space has started its search for planets around other stars, officials said Friday, as astronomers zero in on worlds that are ripe for research by follow-up missions like the James Webb Space Telescope.

Weather-monitoring and tech demo CubeSats deployed in orbit

July 21, 2018

Fifteen CubeSats owned by NASA, Spire Global, and U.S. research institutions launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship in May have been released into orbit, beginning missions to demonstrate miniaturized, low-cost Earth science instruments and join a commercial network of weather-monitoring nanosatellites.

NASA’s Kepler telescope nears end of mission

July 10, 2018

Nearly a decade after launching from Cape Canaveral on a planet-hunting quest that has netted 2,650 new confirmed worlds beyond our solar system, NASA’s Kepler telescope has paused its observations after on-board sensors detected it is running low on fuel.

Webb’s launch delayed to 2021 at an extra cost of nearly $1 billion

June 27, 2018

An independent panel has informed NASA that the James Webb Space Telescope will not be ready for launch until March 2021, and Congress will have to reauthorize the long-delayed, over-budget mission after breaching an $8 billion cost cap, officials said Wednesday.

Chinese data relay satellite nears post over far side of the moon

June 3, 2018

A Chinese communications satellite carrying a Dutch radio astronomy instrument launched last month is expected to maneuver into position around a gravitationally-neutral point beyond the moon in the coming days, ready to relay telemetry and data between Earth and the Chang’e 4 lander set to attempt the first landing on lunar far side late this year.

Q&A with Heino Falcke, principal investigator of the Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer (members only)

June 1, 2018

Heino Falcke, an accomplished radio astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands, leads a team of European scientists and engineers who developed a scientific receiver flying on China’s Queqiao spacecraft flying to a point in space beyond the far side of the moon.