JHUAPL – Spaceflight Now

Launch of asteroid deflection demonstrator slips to November

March 9, 2021

The launch of a NASA spacecraft designed to smash into an asteroid to try out a technique that could protect Earth from threatening space rocks has slipped from July until November, at the earliest, after development delays partially caused by coronavirus-related work slowdowns.

Parker Solar Probe pulls back the veil on Venus’s night side

February 28, 2021

An ultra-sensitive camera on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe caught an ethereal glimpse of the night side of Venus during a flyby last year, revealing terrain seen through the thick haze of the planet’s atmosphere.

NASA selects SpaceX to launch mission studying interstellar space

September 28, 2020

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $109 million contract to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a NOAA space weather observatory, a robotic scout to map water on the moon, and two other ridealong payloads on a single Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in 2024.

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.

Discoveries at solar system’s distant frontier shed light on how planets form

February 13, 2020

Data from the encounter of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft with a frozen reddish snowman-shaped object a billion miles beyond Pluto last year suggest the building blocks of planets may have formed less violently than many scientists expected, officials said Thursday.

NASA’s resilient Van Allen Probes shut down

October 20, 2019

Ground controllers transmitted commands to shut down the second of NASA’s Van Allen Probes on Friday, three months after turning off an identical satellite to conclude a seven-year mission that explored the donut-shaped radiation belts surrounding Earth.

NASA approves development of flying drone to explore Saturn’s moon Titan

June 27, 2019

NASA officials announced Thursday that the agency will move forward with the development of a plutonium-powered robotic quadcopter drone to explore Saturn’s moon Titan, a hazy world covered with dunes and methane lakes that scientists say is reminiscent of the ancient Earth.

New Horizons finds Ultima Thule has an unexpected, flattened shape

February 20, 2019

Images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it flew by an object the size of a large metropolitan area at the frontier of the solar system Jan. 1 have revealed the miniature world has a more flattened shape than the flyby’s initial pictures suggested.

CubeSat deployed from space station to test sample return technology

February 13, 2019

One of five CubeSats deployed from the International Space Station last month is testing a steerable drag brake that could find use in future smallsats to return experiment samples to the ground from low Earth orbit, or on low-cost micro-probes to explore other planets.

Ultima Thule revealed in new detail with fresh flyby image

January 25, 2019

A new image captured minutes before NASA’s New Horizons probe zipped by a rocky object in the Kuiper Belt on New Year’s Day shows the dual-lobed world — nicknamed Ultima Thule — is covered with intriguing fractures and a large crater-like depression that could provide clues about the early history of the solar system.