Decadal Survey – Spaceflight Now

Five years after New Horizons flyby, scientists assess next mission to Pluto

July 14, 2020

Five years ago Tuesday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft barreled by Pluto for a high-speed encounter that gave humanity its first close-up look at a distant world that puzzled astronomers and planetary scientists for nearly a century. Scientists are now planning how to go back.

SpaceX to debut satellite-dimming sunshade on Starlink launch next month

April 28, 2020

A new sunshade, or visor, designed to reduce the brightness of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet satellites will debut on the company’s next launch, a measure intended to alleviate astronomers’ concerns about impacts on observations through ground-based telescopes, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday.

Uranus, Neptune in NASA’s sights for new robotic mission

August 25, 2015

NASA has asked scientists to assess how to design and fly robotic space probes to Uranus and Neptune, the last of the solar system’s classical planets yet to be orbited, likely ensuring the huge icy worlds are near the top of the space agency’s to-do list in the coming decades.