Explorers – Spaceflight Now

Swarm of NASA nanosats to probe source of solar eruptions

April 1, 2020 Stephen Clark

NASA has selected a mission to dispatch six CubeSats, each the size of a toaster oven, to an orbit more than 20,000 miles from Earth to study massive particle ejections from the sun.

NASA satellite to study ionosphere launches after two-year delay

October 11, 2019 Stephen Clark

A refrigerator-sized satellite soared into orbit aboard an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket Thursday night over the Atlantic Ocean, finally setting off on a $252 million mission to probe the dynamic boundary region where space and Earth’s atmosphere meet.

Timeline for Pegasus XL’s launch with NASA’s ICON satellite

October 9, 2019 Stephen Clark

Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket will take about 11 minutes to place NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, satellite into a roughly 357-mile-high (575-kilometer) orbit after an airborne launch off Florida’s east coast.

Live coverage: NASA’s ICON satellite successfully launched

October 9, 2019 Stephen Clark

After a 24-hour delay due to poor weather, an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket fired into orbit at 9:59 p.m. EDT Thursday (0159 GMT Friday) after release from a carrier jet at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral. The Pegasus rocket carried NASA’s ICON satellite into orbit to collect measurements of the ionosphere.

Pegasus rocket ready for airborne launch with NASA scientific satellite

October 8, 2019 Stephen Clark

After a year-long delay to troubleshoot recurring erroneous data signatures from the rudder of Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket, NASA is eager to send a $252 million research satellite into orbit as soon as Thursday night off Florida’s east coast on a mission to probe the ionosphere, a region near the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

Air-launched rocket arrives at Cape Canaveral for satellite delivery mission

October 1, 2019 Stephen Clark

A Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket is back at Cape Canaveral after a cross-country ferry flight Tuesday under an L-1011 carrier jet, ready for final checkouts and a countdown dress rehearsal before an airborne launch off Florida’s east coast Oct. 9 with NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer satellite.

NASA selects mission to probe the history of galaxies

February 14, 2019 Stephen Clark

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 Stephen Clark

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.