NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is about to be sealed inside the nose fairing of its Atlas 5 rocket booster for a seven-year voyage to asteroid Bennu and back to Earth on a mission to seek out clues to the origin of life and the chaotic early solar system.
Five years after winning $1 billion from NASA to mount the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission, scientists and engineers will get their last look at the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft this week as it is closed up inside the nose cone of an Atlas 5 rocket for launch in September.
On the cusp of advancing U.S. weather forecasting, a powerful new satellite was shipped from its Denver factory to the Cape today in preparation for launch in November.
NASA has selected six companies to work on designs for deep space habitat modules that could be used by astronauts living and working near the moon as technology is developed for eventual flights to Mars, the agency announced Tuesday.
Dante Lauretta, a researcher based at the University of Arizona, leads the science team on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission scheduled for launch Sept. 8 on a round-trip journey to asteroid Bennu.
A highly sophisticated U.S. Air Force satellite to sound the alarm when an enemy missile launches has shipped to its Florida launch site for liftoff in October aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
The U.S. Navy has declared the primary orbit-raising system aboard its new MUOS No. 5 communications satellite failed, leaving controllers scrambling to design a rescue plan.
More than three years after its launch was delayed by a corporate merger, a commercial Earth-imaging satellite has finally shipped to its California rocket base for liftoff aboard an Atlas 5 in September.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft fine-tuned its orbit around Jupiter this week, helping steer the spinning space probe on a course to dip beneath the giant planet’s radiation belts in late August for the first time with all its science instruments activated.
Trouble has befallen the U.S. Navy’s new communications satellite that was launched from Cape Canaveral two weeks ago, suspending orbit raising maneuvers and leaving the craft half-way between its rocket deployment orbit and a circular geosynchronous orbit.