Astrophysics – Page 13 – Spaceflight Now

Watch a replay of the Falcon 9 launch with Dragon

June 3, 2017 Spaceflight Now

Watch the launch of a commercial Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship bound for the International Space Station, as seen live on NASA Television.

Lightning near launch pad scrubs liftoff of SpaceX supply ship

June 1, 2017 Stephen Clark

Stormy weather near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center kept SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on the ground Thursday, delaying liftoff of a commercial supply ship with equipment and experiments for the International Space Station until Saturday.

Live coverage: SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule arrives at space station

June 1, 2017 Stephen Clark

Two days after blasting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, SpaceX’s refurbished Dragon supply ship arrived at the International Space Station on Monday with nearly 6,000 pounds of experiments and equipment. Grapple of Dragon by the station’s robot arm occurred at 9:52 a.m. EDT (1352 GMT).

Refurbished SpaceX supply ship ready for liftoff Thursday

May 31, 2017 Stephen Clark

SpaceX will go for another first Thursday, this time flying a refurbished Dragon supply ship carrying nearly 6,000 pounds of cargo and experiments to the International Space Station nearly three years after its first mission.

Satellite for broadband on-the-go next in rapid-fire SpaceX launch campaign

May 10, 2017 Stephen Clark

A powerhouse communications satellite owned by Inmarsat has been fueled for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to provide broadband links for passengers and crews aboard ships and airplanes, while technicians are loading space station-bound supplies into a commercial Dragon cargo capsule and preparing a Bulgarian telecom for launch on two other SpaceX boosters by mid-June.

James Webb Space Telescope shipped to Texas for its biggest test yet

May 9, 2017 Stephen Clark

The centerpiece of the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a three-month test to ensure the observatory’s sensors and gold-coated mirrors work in the frigid temperatures of deep space.

Gravitational wave testbed repurposed as comet dust detector

April 26, 2017 Stephen Clark

In the final months of Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission, scientists have found an unexpected use for the trailblazing testbed for a future gravitational wave observatory by tracking the tiny dings made by microscopic particles that strike the spacecraft in deep space, exploiting the impacts to learn about the population of dust grains cast off by comets and asteroids across the solar system.

With an eye on growing cost, NASA aims for 2025 launch of next ‘great observatory’

April 19, 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA managers say the WFIRST mission, the next in the agency’s line of powerful observatories after the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, could cost around $3.2 billion after budgeting for a novel first-of-its-kind instrument to probe the make-up of planets around nearby stars and a bigger-than-expected launch vehicle.

Watch a video replay of NASA’s exoplanet announcement

February 22, 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA announced Wednesday the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star 39 light-years from Earth, and three of the rocky worlds may have the right conditions to support life.

Star found with record seven Earth-size planets

February 22, 2017 William Harwood

Astronomers have discovered seven roughly Earth-size planets very close to a cool dwarf star some 39 light years from Earth, including three orbiting in the star’s habitable zone where liquid water, a key ingredient for life as it’s known on Earth, could be present, researchers announced Wednesday.