Ball Aerospace – Spaceflight Now

NASA selects mission to probe the history of galaxies

February 14, 2019

NASA has selected a space telescope named SPHEREx for launch in 2023 on a mission to survey the sky in near-infrared wavelengths, collecting spectral data to study the origins of the universe and ices in our own galaxy that could help seed life on planets.

Q&A with Jamie Bock, principal investigator of NASA’s SPHEREx mission (members only)

February 14, 2019

Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech, is principal investigator of the SPHEREx astrophysics mission selected by NASA on Feb. 13 as the next medium-class mission in the agency’s line of Explorer probes.

Hubble’s premier camera resumes observations

January 25, 2019

The most-used instrument on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is back in business after engineers on the ground determined a fault that halted the camera’s science observations earlier this month was caused by erroneous telemetry data, and was not a symptom of a hardware failure as initially suspected.

Controllers troubleshoot problem with Hubble camera

January 10, 2019

The partial shutdown of the U.S. government could complicate efforts to troubleshoot a suspected hardware problem with the Hubble Space Telescope’s premier science instrument, but officials are optimistic the camera will eventually be restored to operations, the head of the observatory’s science operations team said Wednesday.

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.

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.

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.

Photos: Delta 2 climbs into the night from Vandenberg Air Force Base

November 21, 2017

Launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s Central Coast on its third try, United Launch Alliance’s Delta 2 rocket lifted off Saturday with NOAA’s JPSS 1 polar-orbiting weather satellite.

Penultimate Delta 2 rocket launch lofts advanced polar-orbiting weather satellite

November 18, 2017

A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket climbed into space Saturday from California with a $1.6 billion polar-orbiting weather satellite for NOAA, the first of four upgraded observatories designed to keep vital meteorological data flowing to forecasters for the next two decades.