New Frontiers – Page 5 – Spaceflight Now

Final Pluto data transmission received from flyby probe

October 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

The last bits of data collected during NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s speedy flyby of Pluto last year are back on Earth, scientists said Thursday, marking the official end of the probe’s prime mission.

Mission managers keeping Juno in elongated orbit until December

October 15, 2016 Stephen Clark

Ground teams are buying more time to study two sluggish valves inside the Juno spacecraft’s fuel pressurization system and postponing a major engine burn that was scheduled for next week to reshape the probe’s orbit around Jupiter, officials said Friday.

OSIRIS-REx reaches launch pad with money to spare

September 7, 2016 Stephen Clark

The scientist in charge of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission hopes to apply more than $30 million in leftover funding toward reducing the risk of the probe’s touch-and-go maneuver to snag a piece of asteroid Bennu, then eventually hire more experts to analyze the primordial specimens when they return to Earth in 2023.

Juno beams back dramatic new pictures of Jupiter

September 2, 2016 William Harwood

NASA’s Juno spacecraft, making its first scientific run over Jupiter’s poles Aug. 27, captured remarkable images of Jupiter’s atmosphere, showing that the equatorial bands and zones familiar to even amateur astronomers completely disappear at high latitudes.

Juno gets its closest look at Jupiter

August 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

Nearly two months after NASA’s Juno spacecraft slipped into orbit around Jupiter, the solar-powered probe made a passage 2,600 miles over the giant planet’s colorful banded clouds Saturday, the closest planned encounter during its 20-month exploration of the solar system’s largest world.

Video: Walk around NASA’s new asteroid sample probe

August 23, 2016 Stephen Clark

Take a walk around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft less than three weeks before its Sept. 8 launch on top of an Atlas 5 rocket. Rich Kuhns, the mission’s program manager from Lockheed Martin, points out some of the major features on the probe.

Photos: OSIRIS-REx prepped for encapsulation

August 23, 2016 Stephen Clark

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.

One of NASA’s cleanest spacecraft ever is ready to fly

August 23, 2016 Stephen Clark

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.

Q&A with Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator

August 8, 2016 Stephen Clark

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.

Assembly complete for NASA’s asteroid sample return spacecraft

October 25, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA’s first asteroid-sampling probe, OSIRIS-REx, has been assembled at a Lockheed Martin satellite factory in Colorado and is now being tested to ensure it can withstand the harsh journey to an asteroid and back.