Electric Propulsion

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft runs out of fuel in the asteroid belt

November 2, 2018

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft ran out of fuel Wednesday and stopped transmitting to Earth, ending an 11-year mission that explored the two largest objects in the asteroid belt and set several records in the annals of space history.

Q&A with Marc Rayman, chief engineer on NASA’s Dawn mission (members only)

November 1, 2018

Marc Rayman is chief engineer on NASA’s Dawn mission, which has run out of fuel after a 11-year interplanetary journey that explored Vesta and Ceres, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Ariane 5 launches two satellites on 7-year voyage to Mercury

October 20, 2018

A powerful European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from French Guiana late Friday and boosted a pair of satellites into space for a seven-year plunge into the inner solar system, a voyage requiring seven planetary flybys to slow down enough in the sun’s gravitational clutches to slip into orbit around hellish Mercury.

Photos: BepiColombo stacked for launch to Mercury

October 19, 2018

Ground crews at the Guiana Space Center in South America have spent the last few months preparing the BepiColombo spacecraft, a tandem mission with European and Japanese science orbiters bound for Mercury, for launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

Live coverage: Probe heading to Mercury blasts off from French Guiana

October 19, 2018

The nearly $1.9 billion BepiColombo mission to Mercury jointly developed by the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency lifted off Friday night from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. Launch occurred at 9:45 p.m. EDT Friday (0145 GMT Saturday).

Arianespace aims for busy second half of 2018

July 3, 2018

Europe’s first mission to Mercury, a quartet of Galileo navigation spacecraft, the world’s first global winds observatory, and a new European weather satellite have arrived at an equatorial launch base in French Guiana in preparation for launches in the coming months.

New target dates set for next two Falcon 9 launches

May 16, 2018

The launch of five commercial Iridium message relay satellites and a pair of U.S.-German orbiting geophysics probes on a Falcon 9 rocket from California has been delayed three days to May 22, and a week-long schedule slip to May 31 is expected for the next SpaceX flight from Cape Canaveral with an SES communications payload.