Orbit

China, Russia aim for first joint astronaut Moon landings in next decade

China and Russia expect to put their first crews of astronauts on the Moon sometime in the next decade, representatives said on Wednesday. Already established plans for their International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) include a lineup of robotic lunar missions and coming up with a legal framework for exploring the Moon, an effort similar to… Read more

Blue Origin auctions New Shepard ride with Jeff Bezos for $28 million

Blue Origin’s month-long auction for a trip to the edge of space with its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos ended on Saturday with a closing price of $28 million. The flight aboard New Shepard, slated for July 20th, will mark the company’s first mission flying humans, in which the winning bidder will bask in a few… Read more

China’s Zhurong rover sends a selfie from Mars

China has released new images from its Zhurong rover, which began wheeling its way around Mars in late May. One of the photos is a lovely selfie of Zhurong posed next to its landing platform. The “touring group photo,” as the China National Space Administration calls it in a blog post, was taken with a… Read more

SpaceX’s Starlink is in talks with ‘several’ airlines for in-flight Wi-Fi

The team behind SpaceX’s growing satellite internet network Starlink is in talks with “several” airlines to beam internet to their airplanes, the project’s vice president said during a conference panel on Wednesday. Expanding Starlink from rural homes and onto airlines is an expected move for Elon Musk’s space company as it races to open the… Read more

The Senate just advanced the beef between SpaceX and Blue Origin

A controversial amendment pushed by Jeff Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin passed the Senate Wednesday night, inching closer to becoming law. Crammed inside a mammoth science and technology bill designed primarily to counter competition from China, the amendment would allow NASA to spend up to $10 billion on its embattled Moon lander program. Aside from… Read more

NASA will send two missions to Venus for the first time in over 30 years

The agency has picked two new robotic missions to explore the hot hell-world of Venus, Earth’s neighbor and the second planet from the Sun, administrator Bill Nelson announced on Wednesday. The two missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, were among four competing proposals under the latest round of NASA’s Discovery Program, which manages smaller planetary exploration missions… Read more

How to Track Satellite Fly-Bys with Raspberry Pi

With SpaceX’s Starlink being made available in my area, I became curious about just how many satellites were overhead at any given time. Fortunately, the US Space Command tracks and makes available data for tracking the live positions of objects in orbit. We can download this data, and use a Raspberry Pi and some speakers… Read more

Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is returning to space — this time, on a private ride

Peggy Whitson, one of NASA’s most experienced retired astronauts, is going back to space — this time with a racecar driver and two other passengers in the latest mission planned by Axiom Space. The Houston-based space company announced on Tuesday that Whitson will serve as the mission commander for its second private flight to the… Read more

China releases first images from its Zhurong rover on Mars

China’s Zhurong rover has beamed back its first images from the surface of Mars after landing on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia. The rover plunged through the Martian atmosphere last Friday, bundled together with a lander after separating from China’s Tianwen-1 probe. The new images released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) show… Read more

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket suffers failure, loses payload of two satellites

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket failed to reach orbit after suffering an unexpected engine shutdown mid-flight on Saturday, losing the mission’s payload of two satellites, the company said. The launch from New Zealand was Electron’s 20th, and marked the company’s second mission failure in less than a year. Electron, a roughly six-story tall rocket with two… Read more

China is set to land on Mars for the first time

Sometime between tonight and next Wednesday, China will attempt to land a pair of robots on the surface of Mars, making a daring bid to become the second country to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since February, will eject a rover and lander… Read more

From Texas to Hawaii: SpaceX plans first orbital Starship test

SpaceX plans to have its first Starship test flight to orbit launch from Texas and splash down off the coast of an island in Hawaii, according to a document the company filed with the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday. The orbital flight test would mark the first time SpaceX stacks both elements of its massive… Read more

NASA’s asteroid-punching spacecraft begins its trek back home

The NASA spacecraft that snatched a sample of rocks from the distant Bennu asteroid last year fired up a suite of thrusters on Monday and committed to its two-year journey back home. The maneuver kicks the minivan-sized spacecraft, dubbed Osiris-REx, onto a winding cosmic path around the Sun and toward Earth’s orbit. When it returns… Read more

An out-of-control Chinese rocket has re-entered Earth’s atmosphere

The 100-foot-tall, 22-metric-ton Chinese Long March 5B rocket that launched the first chunk of Beijing’s new space station has reentered Earth’s atmosphere near the Maldives, China’s Manned Space Engineering Office reported. US Space Command, which helps locate man-made satellites in orbit around the planet, was tracking the rocket’s location. The agency said the rocket “re-entered… Read more

Chinese rocket falling to Earth this weekend poses ‘extremely low’ risk to people

Another “out-of-control” Chinese rocket stage in orbit has spawned a news cycle. But for people on Earth, there’s not much to worry about. The 100-foot-tall, 22-metric-ton corpse of a Chinese Long March 5B rocket that launched the first chunk of Beijing’s new space station last week will reenter Earth’s atmosphere sometime this weekend, and there’s… Read more