NASA – Page 54 – Spaceflight Now

Launch timeline for SpaceX’s 20th space station resupply mission

March 6, 2020 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will go from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit in less than 10 minutes Friday night with a Dragon capsule heading for the International Space Station carrying more than 4,300 pounds of supplies and experiments.

Space station to receive new outdoor deck for science experiments

March 6, 2020 Stephen Clark

An Airbus-owned, German-built outdoor science deck is set for launch Friday night from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule, heading for the International Space Station to make the orbiting research outpost more accessible for commercial space experiments.

Live coverage: Dragon supply ship arrives at space station

March 6, 2020 Stephen Clark

Wrapping up a two-day pursuit since launching from Cape Canaveral, a SpaceX Dragon supply ship arrived at the International Space Station Monday with more than two tons of cargo and experiments. The automated cargo freighter was captured by the station’s robotic arm at 6:25 a.m. EDT (1025 GMT).

Axiom strikes deal with SpaceX to ferry private astronauts to space station

March 5, 2020 Stephen Clark

Axiom Space, a Houston-based company with plans to develop a commercial outpost in space, announced Thursday it has signed a contract with SpaceX to ferry a professional astronaut and three paying passengers to the International Space Station as soon as next year on the first fully private human spaceflight mission to Earth orbit.

Seventh-grader wins contest to name new Mars rover: Perseverance

March 5, 2020 William Harwood

Twenty-eight thousand students across the United States submitted essays and proposed names for NASA’s newest Mars rover and on Thursday, the agency announced the winner: Perseverance, submitted by Virginia seventh-grader Alexander Mather.

DSCOVR resumes operations after eight-month outage

March 5, 2020 Stephen Clark

The Deep Space Climate Observatory has resumed regular observations after NOAA and NASA engineers uplinked a software patch to the spacecraft a million miles from Earth, restoring data on space weather and a daily series views of the sunlit side of our home planet.

NASA taps SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch mission to metal asteroid

March 4, 2020 Stephen Clark

NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a robotic mission in July 2022 to explore Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche probe is NASA’s first mission assigned to fly on SpaceX’s heavy-lift launcher.

SpaceX test-fires rocket, preps for final flight of first-generation Dragon capsule

March 2, 2020 Stephen Clark

The Falcon 9 booster for SpaceX’s next mission fired up briefly on a Cape Canaveral launch pad Sunday in a routine pre-flight test before a scheduled launch Friday night to kick off the final flight of the first version of the company’s Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station.

Boeing says thorough testing would have caught Starliner software problems

February 28, 2020 Stephen Clark

The program manager in charge of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule program said Friday that additional checks would have uncovered problems with the spaceship’s software that plagued the craft’s first unpiloted orbital test flight in December, but he pushed back against suggestions that Boeing engineers took shortcuts during ground testing.

SpaceX swaps upper stage for next Falcon 9 launch

February 26, 2020 Stephen Clark

SpaceX is targeting launches March 6 and March 11 for its next two missions after swapping an upper stage for its next Falcon 9 rocket with another stage already being readied for liftoff at Cape Canaveral.