JPL – Spaceflight Now

April 18, 2025

Breaking News

[ April 16, 2025 ] Northrop Grumman launches first Minotaur 4 rocket from Vandenberg in 14 years Minotaur 4
[ April 13, 2025 ] SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rocket booster on record-setting 27th time on midnight Starlink flight Falcon 9
[ April 12, 2025 ] SpaceX launches Starshield satellites for the NRO on Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Falcon 9
[ April 10, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 400th flight-proven Falcon booster with Saturday Starlink mission Falcon 9
[ April 9, 2025 ] Poor weather forces a scrub of the Kuiper 1 launch on a ULA Atlas 5 Atlas 5

NASA eyes ion engines for Mars orbiter launching in 2022

March 3, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA officials want the agency’s next Mars orbiter to pull double duty as a communications relay station for a fleet of surface landers and as a trailblazer for a future round-trip sample return mission and human expeditions to the red planet.

Rover data suggest Mars crater once contained long-lived lake

December 10, 2014 Stephen Clark

Scientists analyzing imagery from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover believe sediments left by an ancient lake more than three billion years ago formed a towering mountain that is set to be the robot’s research subject for the rest of its mission on the red planet.