Tag: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Thomas Stafford, 93, Commander of First U.S.-Soviet Space Mission, Dies

Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut who pioneered cooperation in space when he commanded the American capsule that linked up with a Soviet spaceship in July 1975, died on Monday in Satellite Beach, Fla. He was 93. His death, in a retirement home, was confirmed by his wife, Linda. She said he had recently been diagnosed […]

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Taiwan Is Building a Satellite Network Without Elon Musk

In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, […]

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Europa, Thought to Be Habitable, May Be Oxygen-Starved

Under its bright, frosty shell, Jupiter’s moon Europa is thought to harbor a salty ocean, making it a world that might be one of the most habitable places in our solar system. But life as we know it needs oxygen. And it’s an open question whether Europa’s ocean has it. Now, astronomers have nailed down […]

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Odysseus Spacecraft Lands on Moon, First Time for U.S. Since 1972

For the first time in a half-century, an American-built spacecraft has landed on the moon. The robotic lander was the first U.S. vehicle on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, the closing chapter in humanity’s astonishing achievement of sending people to the moon and bringing them all back alive. That is a feat that […]

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Intelligence About Russia Puts Focus on New U.S. Satellite Push

Hours after the news broke on Wednesday that the United States had picked up worrisome intelligence about Russia’s capacity to strike American satellites, the Pentagon sent a missile-tracking system into orbit, part of a vast new effort to bolster the military’s growing presence in space. The timing was coincidental. But it underscored how concerns about […]

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Live Video: Watch SpaceX Launch Intuitive Machines Nova-C Moon Lander

Another month, another day, another try at the moon. A robotic lunar lander launched in the early morning hours of Thursday, one day after a technical glitch postponed the first launch attempt. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 […]

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SpaceX to Launch Intuitive Machines Nova-C Moon Lander: How to Watch

Another month, another try at the moon. A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch in the early morning hours of Wednesday. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972. It is also the latest private […]

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It Started as Winter Break. It Ended With a Doomed Moon Mission.

A gaggle of students from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh traveled to Florida last month during their winter break. The students, many of them studying to be engineers and scientists, went there to watch a rocket launch that would send a small 4.8-pound robotic rover that they had helped build on its journey to the […]

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NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Ends Its Mars Mission

Ingenuity, the little Mars helicopter that could, can’t anymore. At least one rotor broke during the robotic flying machine’s most recent flight last week, NASA officials announced on Thursday. Ingenuity remains in contact with its companion, the Perseverance rover, which has been exploring a dried-up river bed for signs of extinct Martian life. Ingenuity will […]

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Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander Burns Up in Earth’s Atmosphere

A spacecraft that was headed to the surface of the moon has ended up back at Earth instead, burning up in the planet’s atmosphere on Thursday afternoon. Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh announced in a post on the social network X that it lost communication with its Peregrine moon lander at 3:50 p.m. Eastern time, which […]

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Moon Lander Malfunctions After Launch, Raising Questions for NASA

The first NASA-financed commercial mission to send a robotic spacecraft to the surface of the moon will most likely not be able to make it there. The lunar lander, named Peregrine and built by Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, encountered problems shortly after it lifted off early Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launch of […]

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First Flight of the Vulcan Rocket Sends an American Lander Toward the Moon

A brand-new rocket lifted off early Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla., sending a robotic spacecraft toward the surface of the moon. No American spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon since 1972. For United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the successful launch of the Vulcan Centaur rocket […]

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Vulcan Rocket Prepares for First Launch With Moon Lander Mission

A brand-new American rocket is on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and for the first time in more than 50 years, an American spacecraft will be headed toward the surface of the moon. The rocket is called Vulcan, and it was built by the company United Launch Alliance. Here’s what you need to know […]

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NASA Spacecraft Takes New Images of Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon

A NASA spacecraft swooped past Io, one of Jupiter’s largest moons and the most volcanically active world in our solar system. The spacecraft, the Juno orbiter, made its closest flyby yet of Io’s turbulent landscape, and sent back snapshots speckled with sharp cliffs, edgy mountain peaks, lakes of pooled lava and even a volcanic plume. […]

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A Stunning Eclipse, a Moon Race and Other Space Events in 2024

Crucial Events on the Path Back to the Moon NASA wants to put American astronauts on the moon’s surface in the years ahead with the Artemis III mission. Before that can happen, though, many things have to go right, and two of the most important are scheduled for 2024. The first is the Artemis II […]

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Practicing for a Mars Mission in the Utah Desert

In May 1996, an autonomous resupply vehicle docked with Russia’s ailing Mir space station. It carried the usual items — food, clothes, scientific equipment — along with much more cherished ones. The American astronaut Shannon Lucid received M&Ms. For the two cosmonauts, Yuri Usachev and Yuri Onufriyenko, there were perfume-scented letters offering a welcome respite […]

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An Explosive Trump Ruling, and a Chaotic Congo Election

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]

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NASA Streams Cat Video From Deep, Deep Space

On Dec. 11, NASA engineers anxiously gathered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to view a cat video, wondering if it would be in the pristine high definition for which they had hoped. To their relief, it was. For the first time, high-definition video — this one of a lab employee’s cat named […]

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It’s Christmastime in the Cosmos

For astronomers peering into the depths of the universe, Christmas came a little early this year. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA released an image last month of a Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, a winking collection of galaxies 4.3 billion light-years from Earth. And last week, an image of Cassiopeia A, the […]

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An Ally in the Climate Fight: Nature Itself

The global climate summit’s declaration on fossil fuels got all the headlines this month in Dubai. But nature scored quite a win of its own. In the final agreement, attendees of COP28 recognized that climate change threatens ecosystems and the billions of people who depend on them. They also committed to halting all deforestation and […]

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How NASA Learned to Love the Worm Logo

Richard Danne, left, shakes hands with NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana. Credit…Keegan Barber/NASA Last month, NASA welcomed Richard Danne to its headquarters in Washington to celebrate work he had done nearly half a century ago. Mr. Danne never studied the stars. He never built a rocket. But he and his design partner, Bruce Blackburn, came […]

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How Much Can Forests Fight Climate Change? A Sensor in Space Has Answers.

Over the last century, governments around the world have drawn boundaries to shield thousands of the world’s most valuable ecosystems from destruction, from the forests of Borneo and the Amazon to the savannas of Africa. These protected areas have offered lifelines to species threatened with extinction, supported the ways of life for many traditional communities […]

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Big Explosions and Major Progress in SpaceX’s 2nd Starship Launch

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, launched its Starship rocket from the coast of South Texas on Saturday, a mammoth vehicle that could alter the future of space transportation and help NASA return astronauts to the moon. Saturday’s flight of Starship, a powerful vehicle designed to carry NASA astronauts to the moon, was not a complete […]

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Frank Borman, Astronaut Who Led First Orbit of the Moon, Dies at 95

Frank Borman, the commander of NASA’s 1968 Apollo 8 spaceflight, whose astronauts became the first men to orbit the moon, captured the famed image known as Earthrise and read lines from Genesis to deliver a brief Christmastime uplift to a troubled America, died on Tuesday in Billings, Mont. He was 95. His death was announced […]

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Their Final Wish? A Burial in Space.

When Ken Ohm, a professor of physics, thinks about his body, he is cognizant of both its rewards and its limitations. It has been an exceptionally athletic body: It allowed him to make beautiful memories playing baseball and to compete as a javelin thrower until age 82. On the other hand, no matter how persistently […]

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Ken Mattingly, Astronaut Scrubbed From Apollo 13, Is Dead at 87

Ken Mattingly, who orbited the moon and commanded a pair of NASA shuttle missions, but who was remembered as well for the flight he didn’t make — the near-disastrous mission of Apollo 13 — died on Tuesday in Arlington, Va. He was 87. His death was confirmed by Cheryl Warner, a NASA spokeswoman. She did […]

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Photos: NASA’s Lucy Mission Finds Dinkinesh Asteroid Has a Moon

On Wednesday, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed by its first asteroid target — and scientists on the mission were shocked to discover that the rock, named Dinkinesh, was actually two rocks. The binary consists of a larger, primary asteroid and a smaller “moon” orbiting around it, as seen in images that Lucy captured of the pair. […]

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Live Video: Watch the Launch of NASA’s Psyche Asteroid Mission

Is the asteroid Psyche really a hunk of mostly metal? Is the object, which is nearly as wide as Massachusetts, the core of a baby planet whose rocky outer layers were knocked off during a cataclysmic collision in the early days of the solar system? Right now, all that astronomers can say is maybe, maybe […]

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NASA Reveals First Pictures of Osiris-Rex Asteroid Samples

A first glimpse of the jackpot from a seven-year mission to bring back bits of an asteroid was unveiled on Wednesday. NASA officials in Houston displayed images of salt-and-pepper chunks of rock and particles of dark space dust that were brought back to Earth from the asteroid, Bennu, and described initial scientific observations about the […]

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Maybe in Your Lifetime, People Will Live on the Moon and Then Mars

The moon is a magnet, and it is pulling us back. Half a century ago, the astronauts of Apollo 17 spent three days on that pockmarked orb, whose gravitational pull tugs not just on our oceans but our imaginations. For 75 hours, the astronauts moonwalked in their spacesuits and rode in a lunar rover, with […]

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