NASA – Page 9 – Spaceflight Now

Firefly Aerospace aces Moon landing on first attempt

March 2, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The successful touchdown marks the beginning of a planned 14-day mission on the lunar surface. The Blue Ghost lander is designed to power down after operating for a few hours into the lunar nighttime, which begins on March 16.

As it happened: Firefly Aerospace completes first Moon landing with Blue Ghost

March 1, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The robotic lander will attempt to touch down on the lunar surface at Mare Crisium near Mons Latreille Sunday morning. The anticipated landing time is no earlier than 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 UTC).

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander arrives in lunar orbit

February 16, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The robotic lander reached the Moon’s orbit after performing its 4 minute and 15 second Lunar Orbit Insertion burn, which began at 8:51 p.m. EST on Feb. 13 (0151 UTC on Feb. 14).

NASA announces new launch date for Crew-10, swap of SpaceX Dragon spacecraft following construction delays

February 12, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The four-member crew will now fly onboard Dragon Endurance instead of SpaceX’s fifth Crew Dragon spacecraft as originally intended. Launch has moved up to Wednesday, March 12, “pending mission readiness and completion of the agency’s certification of flight readiness process.”

NASA leaders, Artemis contractors argue importance of architecture continuity for returning to the Moon

February 7, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

Representatives from NASA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin argued that the United States shouldn’t skip past the Moon in favor of Mars when it comes to crewed deep space exploration. The discussion came up during a panel at the SpaceCom conference concerning the forthcoming Artemis 2 mission.

Former head of Boeing’s Starliner program returns to role

January 31, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The change in leadership follows the decision made in 2024 by Mark Nappi, the former VP and program manager of CCP, to retire from Boeing in February.

American, Japanese robotic landers share rocket launch to the Moon

January 15, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander will deploy first and is designated as the primary payload and ispace’s Resilience lander will follow about 30 minutes after. Liftoff from pad 39A happened at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 UTC).

As it happened: NASA announces new path options for Mars Sample Return mission

January 7, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

NASA put out a call in 2024 for proposals from industry and NASA centers for how to retrieve samples from the Martian surface in a cheaper way and on a shorter timeline.

Nelson: Decision on Mars Sample Return expected before new administration takes office

December 27, 2024 Will Robinson-Smith

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said teams were meeting at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday, Dec. 20, to make some of the final determinations about how they will return dozens of samples from the Red Planet.

As it happened: NASA leadership announces delays to first Artemis crewed launch, Moon landing missions

December 5, 2024 Spaceflight Now

NASA announced new delays for the Artemis Moon program at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Artemis 2 mission to circle the Moon is now scheduled for 2026 and the first lunar landing is delayed to 2027.