SpaceX has successfully launched the Fram2 private crewed mission on March 31 at 9:46 PM Eastern time on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. Fram2 is the first human spaceflight to explore the Earth's polar regions, which are not visible to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The crew will observe the Earth's poles through a panoramic cupola attachment from an altitude of 430 km (267 miles). SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule can fly from the North to the South Pole in around 46 minutes and Fram2 is a three-to-five day mission, so it's expected to provide scientists with a healthy amount of footage capturing the polar regions. In fact, SpaceX has already released the mission's first views of the Earth's poles from space.
The crew will observe unusual light emissions resembling auroras in the regions, including STEVEs, which appear as purple and green light ribbons in the night sky. They will also conduct 22 experiments designed to better understand human health in space for the sake of long-duration missions in the future. The crew will capture the first human X-rays in space, study exercises meant to preserve muscle and bone mass, explore sleep and stress patterns using wearable tech, monitor their glucose and observe the female crew members' hormonal health. They also won't get the typical medical and mobility assistance upon landing to see how they re-acclimate to gravity on their own, and they will get an MRI immediately after they arrive. NASA called Fram2's launch a "significant step" in humanity's understanding of how our bodies will fare in outer space.
Chun Wang, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency investor who now lives in Norway, paid for the trip and is one of the astronauts currently on board. Jannicke Mikkelsen, a filmmaker working on technology for movies shot in remote and hazardous environments, serves as the mission's vehicle commander. Rabea Rogge, a robotics researcher from Norway, is the pilot. Finally, Eric Philips, a professional polar adventurer and guide, is the mission's medical officer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-launches-fram2-the-first-crewed-spaceflight-to-explore-earths-polar-regions-130006166.html?src=rss
The latest image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, pictured above, also happens to be a stunning illustration of Einstein's theory of general relativity. So much so that the cosmic phenomenon is called an "Einstein ring."
Einstein rings happen when light from one distant object is bent around the mass of another, slightly closer and even larger object. The effect is normally too subtle to observe up close on a local level, "but it sometimes becomes clearly observable when dealing with curvatures of light on enormous, astronomical scales," NASA writes. In the case of this image, when the light from one distant galaxy is warped around the mass of another.
This "gravitational lensing," as it's technically called, is Einstein's general relativity in practice. Spacetime (the fusion of space and time that makes up the fabric of the universe) curving around an object's mass, with the curve itself being gravity. Objects like the ones pictured in the image — an elliptical galaxy wrapped in a spiral galaxy — are "the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see."
This Einstein ring was captured by the "Strong Lensing and Cluster Evolution (SLICE) survey" conducted at the University of Liège in Belgium. The survey is led by a team of astronomers looking "to trace eight billion years of galaxy cluster evolution," according to NASA.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/latest-webb-telescope-image-shows-a-cosmic-phenomenon-called-an-einstein-ring-185911553.html?src=rss
Those stranded Starliner astronauts are finally coming back to Earth, with a touchdown expected on Tuesday evening. Coverage begins on Monday night at around 10:45PM ET, with streams available on NASA’s website and via the NASA+ app.
Monday night’s stream will focus on the hatch closing and the undocking procedure. The stream will go dark until 4:45PM ET on Tuesday as the crew approaches splashdown. The arrival is scheduled for around 5:57PM ET and a live press conference is set for 7:30PM ET.
The two NASA astronauts returning (Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore) were part of Boeing’s Starliner crew to the ISS. This was supposed to be a one-week stay but, just like Gilligan and the rest, was extended to nine months when the ship was deemed unfit for a crewed return to Earth. Five of the thrusters failed enroute. This is forcing the pair to hitch a ride on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX also ran into a delay, as this mission was originally scheduled for February.
The Starliner returned, but without the crew. NASA planned to retrieve Williams and Wilmore back in September via a crewed mission with two empty seats. However, that launch faced technical issues and was delayed until April. This partnership with SpaceX will bring the pair home a couple of weeks early.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/you-can-watch-the-starliner-astronauts-return-to-earth-after-an-unplanned-nine-month-visit-185308418.html?src=rss
Eight days. That’s how long Boeing Starliner’s mission — its first flight test with crew aboard — was supposed to last. But this mission has been singular in almost every way, and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have instead spent the past nine and a half months aboard the International Space Station.
Now, finally, they're headed home. Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is slated to begin undocking from the ISS at 1:05 am ET Tuesday and is scheduled for splashdown at 5:57 pm ET, according to NASA's timetable. (Portions of the mission will stream live on the agency's website.)
The Starliner crew was never truly stranded, to be clear. They always had a way off the space station in an emergency. But if this mission's foibles taught us one thing, it was to expect the unexpected. Even now, six months after the troubled spacecraft autonomously undocked from the ISS and landed at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, leaving its crew behind and effectively ending the flight test, the mission is still making headlines. Boeing Starliner CFT went from a symbol of the myriad struggles in Boeing’s aviation business to a political punching bag, courtesy of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Why did it take so long to bring the astronauts home? And did NASA cave to political pressure in setting the return date? Lets take a look at how we got here and what the evidence suggests.
Starliner was floundering well before liftoff
Boeing Starliner had a long, troubled history before it even got off the ground. Back in 2014, the Space Shuttle era had ended, and the United States was dependent on Russian Soyuz capsules to fly its astronauts. To remedy this, NASA awarded two companies — Boeing and SpaceX — Commercial Crew contracts to build new spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.
The official target date for a crewed flight test for these two companies was flexible. But, according to a 2016 report from William Gerstenmaier, the agency’s head of human spaceflight at the time, it was clear NASA expected these demonstration flights to occur in 2017. (Gerst now works for SpaceX.)
Obviously, that did not happen. SpaceX’s uncrewed orbital test occurred in 2019, while the crewed demonstration flight was in 2020. Boeing also finally launched its Starliner capsule to the ISS for an uncrewed test in December 2019. However, that flight went so badly (the capsule did not reach its intended orbit or dock with the station) that NASA required Boeing to implement fixes and perform a second test in May 2022. That test went mostly well, though two of the capsule’s thrusters failed during the orbital insertion burn, and post-flight inspections revealed nearly a mile of flammable tape in the capsule wiring which required removal.
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner attached to an Atlas V rocket.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The May 2024 launch was delayed a few times due to rocket issues and problems with ground systems. NASA and Boeing also detected a helium leak in the propellant system (helium is used to push propellant to the thrusters). They attributed it to a defective seal, but after the spacecraft launched on June 5, it sprung a total of five helium leaks. What’s more, five thrusters failed on approach to the ISS.
Astronauts Wilmore and Williams were able to successfully dock with the ISS, but their mission changed significantly in those few hours; they had to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with the spacecraft and whether it was safe to bring them home.
It’s important to remember that NASA has only tested six total new crewed spacecraft (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Boeing Starliner). It’s a very difficult process, and everyone expects there to be problems — that’s why NASA does these tests. But even for a test flight, this was bad.
Eight days to nine months
Over the summer of 2024, NASA quietly tested and re-tested Starliner’s thrusters, both in orbit and on the ground, to find out why the thrusters failed. In the absence of meaningful updates from NASA, people started to seriously question whether the agency thought Starliner was safe to bring the astronauts home.
In mid-July, NASA paid SpaceX to study bringing more than four astronauts home on a single Crew Dragon capsule, as well as launching two astronauts on a Crew Dragon instead of the usual four. The agency insisted this was related to Frank Rubio’s extended stay on the ISS the year before. However, at a press conference in early August, Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich confirmed that, in July, NASA had started working with SpaceX on contingency scenarios for Butch and Suni’s possible return, as they continued to troubleshoot Starliner’s faulty thrusters.
Finally on August 24, NASA announced that Starliner would return to Earth uncrewed. There were serious issues with Starliner’s propulsion system. NASA was concerned about a worst-case scenario in which the thrusters failed and, at the same time, the helium leak rates increased. This could have left the astronauts in orbit, unable to perform a re-entry burn. Butch and Suni would become part of SpaceX's ninth Commercial Crew flight (aptly named Crew-9), which would launch on September 28 with just two astronauts. They would serve out the remainder of this mission, which would keep them on the ISS through mid- to late-February.
But why leave them in space until 2025? The bottom line is that the agency chose the least risky option. An extra return mission would have added unnecessary complexity. “Relative to sending up a new Dragon so that Butch and Sunny didn't have to stay up until February, we really never considered that option,” Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, explained at a press conference on August 7. Plus, it takes around four months to prepare a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for launch, and the extra cost would have been too much for NASA to absorb.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the ISS.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Astronauts are accustomed to mission delays and extensions; Frank Rubio had his ISS long-duration stay extended from 6 months to over one year because of a leaky Soyuz capsule, finally returning to Earth after a record-breaking 371 days in space. NASA astronauts can handle a year in space.
“While it's not great to stay up there longer, the ISS has the appropriate countermeasures to maintain their health out to a year at least,” Dr. Dan Buckland, a space medicine researcher at Duke University explained to Engadget in an email. “Put another way, the expected recovery time on Earth might get longer the longer they stay, but the health plateau they are currently at is probably sustainable for the next few months at least.”
This was NASA’s return plan for the Starliner astronauts, which it began working on in July 2024 and announced to the public that August. Fast forward to March of 2025 and almost nothing has changed, except that the mission has become a political punching bag.
Delays and political posturing
The story got even more complicated in mid-December, when NASA announced that Crew-9’s return would be delayed because of a problem with the Crew-10 SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. When a relief crew arrives at the International Space Station, NASA schedules their missions to overlap for a few days. These are called handovers, and they typically run about five days long.
Crew-10 was scheduled to fly on the brand new Crew Dragon, but problems with the batteries on the spacecraft meant that it wouldn’t be ready for a mid-February launch. As a result, Crew-10 wouldn’t launch until late March, and Crew-9 wouldn’t return until after the in-person handover.
Delays with space missions are extremely common, so no one expected that on January 28 Boeing Starliner would come roaring back into the headlines. On Truth Social, President Trump posted the following:
“I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to “go get” the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. They have been waiting for many months on @Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!”
The same day, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, published a post on X claiming that the Biden administration had left the astronauts aboard the ISS. He later said in a Fox News interview on February 18 that the decision to leave Wilmore and Williams in orbit until the end of the Crew-9 mission had been politically motivated.
However, Steve Stich confirmed in a March 7 press briefing that the decision to return Butch and Suni as a part of Crew-9 was made between himself and ISS program manager Dana Weigel, after which it was run up to the administrator. This was not a top-down decision.
What about the return date for Crew-9, though? After this political kerfuffle with Trump and Musk, NASA announced February 11 it was swapping the Crew Dragon capsule for Crew-10 to a previously flown spacecraft. This meant that they could move up Butch and Suni’s return date by two weeks, to mid-March.
Well, as far as anyone can tell, this was also not the result of political pressure.
At a Crew-10 media briefing on Friday, March 7, Stich made it clear that the capsule swap was driven by other motivations, including needing to fit the Crew-10 launch in between the Intuitive Machines mission which launched on February 27 from the same pad (RIP Athena) and the Soyuz handover on the ISS in April. Officials were discussing swapping the capsules a month before the president’s Truth Social post (though it's possible the President was aware of the discussion when it was happening.)
Intuitive Machines' Athena lander nearing the lunar surface.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
“The president’s interest sure added energy to the conversation,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, during that media teleconference. In the end, it’s hard to believe any narrative in which the timeline of Butch and Suni’s return was politically motivated, whether by the Biden administration or the Trump administration.
It’s incorrect to say that NASA isn’t subject to political whims, because it’s a government agency, with a budget proposed by the president and determined by Congress. The agency is bracing itself for drastic budget cuts to its science operations this year. Generally speaking, that means it’s likely that if NASA can safely and reasonably do something that the president asks for, it will try.
But changing around mission timelines and sending up “rescue” missions for astronauts who aren’t in danger? A NASA spokesperson refused to comment on this directly.. But it’s unlikely this was the case, especially considering they stuck with a flight plan that’s been in place since August 2024.
“They simply make the best decisions based on the evidence that they have at the moment, taking into account that their top priority is the lives of the astronauts,” Laura Forczyk, founder of the space consulting firm Astralytical, explained. “NASA makes the best decisions that it can in the moment, regardless of what the popular opinion is.”
What's next for NASA and Boeing?
Once the Crew-9 capsule splashes down, that will truly bring an end to the Boeing Starliner mission, but its ramifications will be felt for a very long time. There are serious questions about the direction of the agency going forward, given the political climate and the new administration’s priorities.
NASA acting administrator Janet Petro has already eliminated the Office of the Chief Scientist, in compliance with the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force order. More cuts are likely; rumors suggest that as much as half of NASA’s science budget will be slashed. This raises questions about whether NASA will be able to operate iconic observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
And NASA’s incoming administrator, Jared Isaacman, is a friend of Elon Musk and works closely with SpaceX. Isaacman conducted the first private spacewalk with Sarah Gillis on Polaris Dawn, a flight he paid SpaceX for, last year. Isaacman still hasn’t been confirmed as administrator, but if he is, he will likely change NASA’s human spaceflight program, starting with the return to the moon: The Artemis III moon landing is currently scheduled for no earlier than mid-2027).
What’s more, we still don’t know the fate of the Starliner program. While NASA continues to work with Boeing to close out in-flight anomaly investigations, it’s uncertain when (or if) the next flight of Starliner might occur. There are also questions surrounding whether Boeing even wants to fly another mission. Back in October,The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing — which also built many modules for the ISS — was considering selling off its space business altogether. As of February 2025, Boeing’s total losses on Starliner had reached $2 billion.
Whatever happens with Boeing Starliner, the massively disproportionate political backlash to a routine NASA decision that prioritized the health and safety of their astronauts is a troubling indicator of what’s to come for the agency.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeing-starliner-astronauts-finally-head-home-nine-months-later-184546850.html?src=rss
FILE - In this photo released by NASA, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, both Expedition 71 Flight Engineers, make pizza aboard the International Space Station's galley located inside the Unity module on Sept. 9, 2024. Items are attached to the galley using tape and velcro to keep them from flying away in the microgravity environment. (NASA via AP, File)
The lunar eclipse this week had many of us gazing up at the night sky to marvel at the red-tinged moon, and now we can see what that eerie effect looked like from the other side thanks to images captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. From the lander’s perspective on the moon, the phenomenon on March 14 was a solar eclipse, and the latest video shows red light cast over Blue Ghost as Earth temporarily blocked the sun. The new imagery came in shortly after the team shared a photo of the diamond ring effect captured by the lander as the sun began to reemerge.
“These images — rapidly captured by our top deck camera with different exposure settings — were stitched together in a quick clip,” Firefly said. “The red hue is the result of sunlight refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere as the sun is blocked by our planet, casting a shadow on the lunar surface.” At the beginning of the video where the images are better lit, you can see Venus as a small dot above the eclipse. And if you look really, really closely, you’ll also see Mercury to its left.
Blue Ghost landed on the moon on March 2, and Firefly has shared some pretty amazing photos and videos since, including landing footage from the spacecraft’s point of view. The lander’s mission is expected to come to an end soon with the onset of lunar night, but it’ll first observe the lunar sunset on March 16.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/see-fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-bathed-in-red-during-solar-eclipse-captured-from-the-moon-203203999.html?src=rss
SpaceX's Crew-10 mission has successfully launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03PM Eastern on March 14. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are onboard and will join the ISS crew after the spacecraft docks with the orbiting lab at 11:30PM Eastern time on March 15. The new crew's arrival will allow NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to fly back home after their supposed week-long stay on the ISS had turned into a nine-month stint.
Williams and Wilmore flew to the ISS aboard the Boeing Starliner's first crewed flight meant to prove its readiness to ferry astronauts to orbit. On the way to the station, however, the Starliner started leaking helium, and some of its thrusters had malfunctioned. While the astronauts and ground engineers tried to solve the issue, NASA had ultimately decided to have the Starliner fly back home uncrewed. The spacecraft returned back to Earth in September, leaving Williams and Wilmore aboard the ISS.
Before Boeing's Starliner flew back, NASA had already decided that Williams and Wilmore will be coming home with the SpaceX Crew-9 personnel. The mission headed to the station with only two astronauts onboard to leave two seats open for its return. They were originally scheduled to fly back in February, but Crew-10's launch was ultimately delayed to give SpaceX enough time to process a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission. Williams and Wilmore are now expected to fly back to Earth with Crew-9's Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov as soon as March 19.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacexs-crew-10-mission-is-on-its-way-to-the-iss-133045695.html?src=rss
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander has snapped a gorgeous photo of a solar eclipse from the Moon in which Earth covers up most of the Sun, leaving only the so-called diamond ring effect. It also looks nearly identical to the logo of the early 2000s genre show Heroes.
The lander snapped the photo at around 1:30AM ET on Friday morning, as the Earth slowly blocked a view of the Sun. The solar eclipse on the Moon occurred at the same time as a total lunar eclipse here on Earth. Terrestrial viewers saw the lunar surface turn a red hue.
The eclipse lasted for around five hours at the lunar landing site in Mare Crisium. Firefly released another image from the earlier part of the eclipse that shows the lander’s solar panel as the Sun starts to hide behind Earth’s shadow. Cool stuff, right?
This is Firefly’s first mission to the Moon, so Blue Ghost is packed with ten NASA instruments designed to probe the lunar surface and gather data to (hopefully) support upcoming human missions to the natural satellite. This is all part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The lander is set to operate on the lunar surface until March 16.
Firefly says it will try to downlink more images from the eclipse once Blue Ghost’s X-band antenna has warmed up after being stuck in the cold throughout the event. The company has already shown off some nifty POV footage of the landing.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-snapped-an-incredible-pic-of-a-solar-eclipse-from-the-moon-180231560.html?src=rss
NASA's SPHEREx observatory is now in space for a two year year mission to create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky. The telescope left the ground on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from a launch pad in California, four years after NASA announced that a SpaceX flight will launch the mission, along with NASA's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) microsatellites. SPHEREx separated from SpaceX's vehicle at 12AM Eastern time on March 12 and will remain in low Earth orbit, where it will maintain a position relative to the sun that will remain the same throughout the year.
Every 98-minute orbit the observatory makes will allow it to view a 360-degree strip of the sky in both optical as well as near-infrared light. The telescope can capture more 360-degree strips as the Earth moves around the sun, enabling it to map the entire celestial sky within six months. SPHEREx was designed to image the entire sky every six months in two years, with its goal being to create a 3D map of over 450 million galaxies. The telescope will also image and gather information on over 100 million stars in the Milky Way.
SPHEREx's map is bound to be colorful: It will separate infrared light emitted by the stars and galaxies into 102 individual colors using a technique called spectroscopy. NASA likens it to the "way a prism splits sunlight into a rainbow." The agency says observing the objects in different colors will reveal various properties about them, such as their composition. For galaxies, their colors could help scientists determine their distance from our planet. The data SPHEREx provides will give scientists information about what happened right after the Big Bang and could provide evidence of cosmic inflation, or the rapid expansion of the early universe. SPHEREx will shed its telescope lens' protective cover in four days and will start its science operations in a little over a month once its temperature has cooled down.
Meanwhile, the four PUNCH satellites, which will also take on a Sun-synchronous orbit, will map the sun's corona by taking polarized white-light images of the celestial object. It will gather data to help us better understand how the corona turns into solar wind, which could lead to accurate predictions of space weather events affecting spacecraft orbiting the Earth.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasas-spherex-space-telescope-launched-into-orbit-by-a-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-055518752.html?src=rss
SpaceX has lost another Starship, as the vehicle's eighth test flight ended in an explosion just like its seventh. The first few minutes of the flight went according to plan: SpaceX launched the Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in Texas at 6:30PM Eastern time on March 6, and its first stage Super Heavy booster flew back down and was successfully captured by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. The event marked the third time SpaceX was able to capture the booster with the tower's mechanical appendages.
The vehicle's upper stage called the "Ship" was supposed to deploy four dummy Starship satellites as part of the test run before splashing down into the Indian Ocean around 50 minutes later. But eight minutes into the flight, the Ship lost multiple Raptor engines, causing it to lose altitude until it ultimately exploded over the Caribbean. Several people who witnessed the event posted videos of the Ship's debris streaking across the sky.
As TechCrunch notes, SpaceX revealed in February that the seventh Starship test flight exploded because it suffered from propellant leaks that resulted in fires. The company took several measures to prevent the same thing from happening, such as adding vents and a new purge system to make the ship resistant to leaks. SpaceX also conducted a longer static fire test to make sure its changes and adjustments were working properly.
The company posted on X that the Starship's eighth test flight "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly" during its ascent burn. However, it it still has to review data from the flight to be able to determine the root cause of the issue. In another statement posted on its website, the company said that "an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship" prior to the ascent burn led to the loss of the engines. SpaceX lost contact with the Ship completely at around nine minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff. The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily halted flights departing from and into some of Florida's busiest airports due to "space launch debris." It also told TechCrunch that it's requiring SpaceX to conduct a "mishap investigation" to determine the cause of the failure, so we'll likely get a more detailed report from the company in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacexs-starship-explodes-again-during-its-eighth-test-flight-140018375.html?src=rss
It was a swing and a miss for the first private attempt at an asteroid mission, but the company is still chalking it up as a win. California startup AstroForge launched a spacecraft dubbed Odin on February 26, but the team lost communication with it shortly after its launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
"The chance of talking with Odin is minimal, as at this point, the accuracy of its position is becoming an issue," the company said in its extensive debrief of the mission. Technical issues occurred at its primary ground station in Australia, but AstroForge said that other problems also could have occurred on Odin to further prevent establishing contact.
Although the launch was a bust, AstroForge maintained optimism about the project as a valuable learning experience for its eventual goal of creating and operating an asteroid mining vehicle. The company is targeting the asteroid 2022 OB5, with the aim of eventually landing on its surface and extracting potentially valuable resources. Odin was built in 10 months for $3.5 million, a sliver of the money and time federal space projects have taken to complete.
AstroForge CEO Matt Gialich had several quotes in the debrief, all peppered with expletives, and he summed up the company ethos as, "At the end of the day, like, you got to fucking show up and take a shot, right? You have to try."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-first-private-asteroid-mission-probe-is-probably-lost-in-deep-space-224803775.html?src=rss
Firefly Aerospace’s first attempt at landing on the moon was a success. The company, which is working with NASA under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, announced early Sunday morning that its Blue Ghost lander softly touched down on the moon, and it’s upright and communicating with the team back home. Blue Ghost landed at 3:34AM ET in a region known as Mare Crisium. While Firefly’s lander isn’t the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon, it is the first to land properly — Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus ended up on its side last year after a faster-than-planned descent.
Blue Ghost and the NASA instruments it’s carrying are expected to remain in operation for about 14 Earth days. After that, lunar night will begin. If all goes as planned, the lander will capture images in the leadup to lunar night and a few hours after darkness falls, getting high-definition imagery of a total eclipse, the lunar sunset and other moments to document the behaviour of levitating lunar dust. NASA is also testing instruments that can drill and collect samples from the surface.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 launched on January 15 and reached lunar orbit about a month later. The team says it’s already sent over 27 GB of data back to Earth from its journey. “Just through transit to the Moon, Firefly’s mission has already delivered the most science data to date for the NASA CLPS initiative,” Shea Ferring, Firefly’s Chief Technology Officer, said in a statement, noting that the hardest part of the mission is over. On X, the company shared a photo showing the lander's shadow on the surface of the moon following its successful touchdown, and joked, “The lander saw her shadow, 2 more weeks of ops!”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-successfully-touched-down-on-the-moon-155728834.html?src=rss
An image captured by the Blue Ghost lander shows the spacecraft's shadow on the surface of the moon, looking out to the horizon with the tiny dot of Earth in the distance
Intuitive Machines, the company that pulled off the first-ever commercial moon landing this time last year with its Odysseus spacecraft, is gearing up for another shot at touching the lunar surface. Its second flight under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is scheduled to take off no earlier than Wednesday February 26, launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The company is once again sending one of its Nova-C landers, this one nicknamed Athena. It’s expected to take about a week for Athena to travel to the moon, before it makes a landing attempt around March 6.
Athena is carrying NASA instruments including a drill and mass spectrometer, which will be used to attempt “one of the first on-site demonstrations of resource use on the moon,” according to the space agency. These tools will measure volatiles in the soil at the landing site in the lunar South Pole. The mission also offers Intuitive Machines another chance at landing its spacecraft with all six feet on the ground. Odysseus, though successful in touching down on the surface, toppled over and ended up lying on its side.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/intuitive-machines-is-expected-to-launch-its-second-lunar-lander-this-week-174703197.html?src=rss
It’s not every day that we get to see a glimpse of what a mysterious space plane is up to in orbit. This week, the US Space Force shared a picture it says was snapped last year by the X-37B, showing Earth in the distance and a bit of the craft itself. X-37B launched on its seventh mission at the end of 2023, though not much is known about what that mission entails. Its previous flight, which wrapped up in 2022, set a new endurance record for the space plane, logging 908 days in orbit.
There isn't too much information to glean from the photo, but it does offer a rare look at X-37B in space. “An X-37B onboard camera, used to ensure the health and safety of the vehicle, captures an image of Earth while conducting experiments in HEO in 2024,” the Space Force wrote on X.
US Space Force
One thing we have been told about the current mission is that it marks the first time the Boeing-made X-37B has tried out a maneuver known as aerobraking, or a more fuel-efficient method of changing orbit through “a series of passes using the drag of Earth's atmosphere.” The Space Force said back in October that the vehicle had begun the process, and the latest update indicates it was successful. “The X-37B executed a series of first-of-kind maneuvers, called aerobraking, to safely change its orbit using minimal fuel,” the Space Force noted. It's unknown how much longer the mission is expected to go on.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-secretive-x-37b-space-plane-snapped-this-picture-of-earth-from-orbit-204803146.html?src=rss
As soon as late February, a lunar lander will depart from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon carrying instruments that could investigate what’s just beneath the surface. Barely two months into the year, it’ll be the third mission to have set out on a journey toward the moon so far in 2025. If 2024 was all about establishing a commercial presence on the moon, 2025 is the year of doubling down. Well, unless Trump decides to deprioritize moon missions and shift the focus to Mars under Elon Musk’s direction, throwing off the whole timeline. But as it stands, it should be a busy year for the moon.
Last year kicked off with the launch of Astrobotics’ Peregrine lander, marking the first of several missions led by companies working under multimillion-dollar contracts as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Peregrine ultimately didn’t make it to its destination after suffering a propellant leak post-launch, but only a few weeks later, Intuitive Machines launched and successfully landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the moon — a first for a private spacecraft. (Odysseus tipped over when it hit the ground, but its payloads were still able to collect and transmit some data).
Now, fast-forward to this year, and NASA has half a dozen CLPS missions on its schedule. The first of these, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, launched on January 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. That same rocket also carried a lunar lander made by the Japanese company ispace, which is making a second attempt for its own commercial exploration endeavor, Hakuto-R.
Firefly’s lander, Blue Ghost, is expected to arrive at the moon first, with a target landing date of March 2 in an area called Mare Crisium. The 6.6-foot-tall solar-powered spacecraft is carrying 10 science payloads for NASA and other partners. That includes a new dust shield system to demonstrate how future missions might prevent particulates from accumulating on spacecraft, instruments for testing sample collection and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based navigation and a radiation tolerant computer. “The objectives of the mission are to investigate heat flow from the lunar interior, plume-surface interactions, [and] crustal electric and magnetic fields,” according to NASA. “It will also take X-ray images of the Earth's magnetosphere.”
Resilience, the ispace lander, is taking a different, low-energy path to the moon and won’t reach its site, Mare Frigoris, until late May or June. That craft has a micro rover called Tenacious on board that is designed to explore, collect surface material and relay data. In addition to a camera and shovel, Tenacious has a tiny model house mounted on it — specifically the “Moonhouse,” by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. The lander is carrying water electrolyzer equipment, a deep space radiation probe and a food production experiment module. (And how could we forget, it also contains a commemorative alloy plate from Bandai Namco Research Institute made in the style of the Gundam franchise’s “Charter of the Universal Century”).
ispace
Intuitive Machines, the company that pulled off the first-ever commercial moon landing with its Odysseus craft last year, is slated to launch its second CLPS mission in the next month or so, around the end of February. The IM-2 Nova-C lander dubbed Athena is headed to the lunar south pole with a meter-long drill and a mass spectrometer for NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1). Its goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of drilling for samples and analyzing those samples on-site for things like water. IM-2 will also serve as a rideshare for NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a small orbiter that will “study the form, abundance and distribution of lunar water and its relation to geology.”
Besides the PRIME-1 instruments, Athena will transport a laser retroreflector array, an Intuitive Machines Micro-Nova Hopper — described as “a propulsive drone that deploys off of a Nova-C lander and hops across the lunar surface” — and a Lunar Surface Communication System “network in a box” made by Nokia. The two companies plan to set up the moon’s first cellular network, which is “engineered to handle surface connectivity between the lander and vehicles, carrying high-definition video streaming, command-and-control communications and telemetry data.”
Intuitive Machines
There’s a chance Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander will take its first trip to the moon as soon as this spring or summer. John Couluris, a senior VP at Blue Origin, said in an interview with 60 Minutes last March that “we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today.” At the time, the company hadn’t yet launched its New Glenn rocket — which would be the vehicle for this mission — even once, so that claim didn’t hold much weight. But after many, many delays, New Glenn finally took its maiden flight in mid-January.
NASA revealed, in an FCC filing spotted by SpaceNews back in August, that it had selected Blue Origin’s lander to bring a camera system, the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS), to the moon’s south pole this year under the CLPS program. In the filing, NASA notes that this needs to be done before 2025 is over, as the data collected by the instrument at landing will help inform plans for the first crewed Artemis moon landing. SCALPSS payloads have flown on other CLPS missions, but the thrust level of Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander is closer to the scale of the Human Landing System NASA will use for astronauts.
Blue Origin said in another FCC filing the same month that its demonstration lunar mission, Pathfinder, could launch as early as March 2025, SpaceNews reported. Don’t be surprised if it actually happens much later.
The next CLPS mission after that isn’t expected to take off until the fall, when Astrobotic will get another shot at landing on the moon. This time, it’ll be sending its larger Griffin lander to a region near the south pole. Griffin Mission 1 was initially supposed to carry NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), but the space agency canceled development of that project late last year due to delays and rising costs. Astrobotic’s lander won’t show up to the moon empty-handed, though. It’ll have a tiny solar-powered CubeRover in tow, as well as a laser retroreflector array to pinpoint the lander’s location.
Astrobotic
We may see a third Intuitive Machines mission before the end of this year. The company and NASA are eyeing late 2025 or early 2026 for the launch of IM-3, which will deliver a suite of instruments focused on studying the magnetic and plasma properties of the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl, an area with its own “mini-magnetosphere.” A rover called the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) will also be on board, plus a trio of small rovers from the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) project that will demonstrate mostly autonomous robots working together. The European Space Agency’s MoonLIGHT laser retroreflector will fly with IM-3 too, along with and the Lunar Space Environment Monitor, from South Korea’s Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).
While this year is certain to bring a lot of activity on and around the moon, there’s one thing we won’t see there just yet — humans. NASA has adjusted the timeline of the Artemis missions a few times since the program’s announcement, and most recently said in December that it’s pushing the first crewed flight, Artemis II, to April 2026. The agency previously said it was shooting for September 2025. Artemis III, the mission in which two astronauts will go to the lunar surface, now isn’t expected to launch until mid-2027.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/2025-is-going-to-be-another-big-year-for-commercial-moon-missions-160038622.html?src=rss
An image captured by the Blue Ghost spacaecraft showing a "selfie" view, with part of the lander shown at the bottom of the image and half of the sphere of Earth in the background
NASA and its partners have published the first wave of information about the samples collected in the OSIRIS-REx mission. "The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons," NASA said in a press release.
The OSIRIS-REx mission used some pretty fascinating tech to autonomously acquire rocks and dust from an asteroid called Bennu. Asteroids can act as time capsules, and Bennu reflects what was happening in the solar system roughly 4.5 billion years ago. After a total journey of 3.9 billion miles, the capsule returned safely to Earth on September 24, 2023.
One paper about Bennu, appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy, revealed that the samples contained 14 amino acids and five nucleobases also found in life forms on Earth. They also uncovered high levels of ammonia in the Bennu samples, as well as formaldehyde; when those two combine in the proper conditions, they can form complex molecules such as amino acids.
The second publication appeared in Nature, and it detailed the environment those molecules formed in. Their assessment found evidence of a "brine," identifying a set of minerals that could have been left behind as salt water evaporated.
"Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard. "Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasas-osiris-rex-mission-teases-new-insights-on-how-life-began-223527954.html?src=rss
NASA and its partners have published the first wave of information about the samples collected in the OSIRIS-REx mission. "The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons," NASA said in a press release.
The OSIRIS-REx mission used some pretty fascinating tech to autonomously acquire rocks and dust from an asteroid called Bennu. Asteroids can act as time capsules, and Bennu reflects what was happening in the solar system roughly 4.5 billion years ago. After a total journey of 3.9 billion miles, the capsule returned safely to Earth on September 24, 2023.
One paper about Bennu, appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy, revealed that the samples contained 14 amino acids and five nucleobases also found in life forms on Earth. They also uncovered high levels of ammonia in the Bennu samples, as well as formaldehyde; when those two combine in the proper conditions, they can form complex molecules such as amino acids.
The second publication appeared in Nature, and it detailed the environment those molecules formed in. Their assessment found evidence of a "brine," identifying a set of minerals that could have been left behind as salt water evaporated.
"Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard. "Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/preview-nasas-osiris-rex-mission-teases-new-insights-on-how-life-began-223033717.html?src=rss
The Hubble Space Telescope is still trucking along more than 30 years after its launch, observing the universe and sending home images for us to marvel at. This week, NASA and ESA highlighted an image captured by Hubble of the highly productive Tarantula Nebula (officially named 30 Doradus) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and it’s a sight to behold.
The Large Magellanic Cloud may be only 10-20% as massive as our Milky Way galaxy, but it boasts some of the most impressive star-forming regions in the nearby Universe! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/juulDT44mD
The Tarantula Nebula is “the largest and most productive star-forming region in the local universe,” with stars roughly 200 times as massive as the sun at its center, according to NASA. This Hubble view gives us a look at the outskirts of the nebula, revealing layers of colorful gas and stars. The Tarantula Nebula sits within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy.
While the final result we see is filled with brilliant colors, Hubble’s images initially come back in grayscale. As NASA has explained, “scientists can create a composite color image by taking exposures using different color filters on the telescope, assigning a color to each filter that corresponds to the wavelength of that filter, and combining the images.” The new image of the Tarantula Nebula doesn’t just represent visible light, but ultraviolet and infrared too. In such a case, colors are assigned to those wavelengths we can’t normally see.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-and-esa-share-a-breathtaking-hubble-image-of-the-tarantula-nebulas-outer-edge-202349788.html?src=rss
An image of the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula showing "A section of a nebula, made up of layers of coloured clouds of gas, of varying thickness. In the background are bluish, translucent and wispy clouds; on top of these are stretches of redder and darker, clumpy dust, mostly along the bottom and right. In the bottom left corner are some dense bars of dust that block light and appear black. Small stars are scattered across the nebula."
The Starship's seventh test flight ended in an explosion when the vehicle's upper stage "experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn" over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX chief Elon Musk posted a video of the event, with debris streaking across and lighting up the sky. During the company's webcast, Dan Huot from SpaceX's communications team said they "saw engines dropping out on telemetry" by the end of the ascent burn and that they ultimately lost contact with the Ship, which is what the company calls the vehicle's upper stage. SpaceX said in a tweet that it will continue reviewing data from the test to understand the explosion's root cause.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory for pilots after the incident, warning them about falling debris in certain areas. SpaceX said before the test that it's meant to "launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades" and it was supposed to conduct Starship's first payload deployment test with the help of 10 Starlink simulators.
Despite the Starship's upper stage burning up, the test was still partially a success. The Ship's Raptor engines fired up during the ascent burn before the ground team lost contact with it around 8 minutes into the flight. SpaceX was also able to retrieve the Super Heavy booster, catching the vehicle's first stage with the mechanical arms on its Starbase launch tower.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacexs-starship-explodes-during-ascent-in-its-seventh-test-flight-034440913.html?src=rss
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has successfully made it to space for its maiden flight, a few days after its planned January 13 launch was scrubbed. The vehicle passed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, shortly after 2AM Eastern time on January 16. New Glenn's booster separated from the rest of the rocket to make its way back to Earth towards a landing platform in the ocean by 2:10 AM, while its second stage and payload went on to reach orbit. The company has just announced on its live feed that it failed to land New Glenn's booster, but it was never the launch's primary purpose.
Dave Limp, the company's CEO, previously stressed that the mission's objective is to reach orbit. "Anything beyond that is a bonus," he wrote in a tweet. He said that landing the booster was "ambitious" but that Blue Origin is still going for it and expects to "learn a lot" from the effort. Notably, it took SpaceX three years of landing tests before it was successfully able to land Falcon 9's first stage on a drone ship in the ocean.
New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a booster that was designed to be reused for a minimum of 25 flights. Blue Origin describes it as its "giant, reusable rocket built for bigger things." It has a massive payload capacity and can carry more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO). For its maiden flight, the vehicle carried the company's Blue Ring Pathfinder, which is part of its Blue Ring platform that will offer spacecraft services to clients like the Pentagon. The mission is meant to test Blue Ring's core flight and ground systems, as well as its operational capabilities.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-launches-into-orbit-on-its-maiden-flight-073451555.html?src=rss
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocketwas ready for liftoff, but the launch planned for January 13 was scrubbed. After some weather-related delays over the weekend, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company said that the $2.5 billion reusable rocket, which has been in development for nearly 13 years, will target its first launch no earlier than Monday, January 13, but as for now we don't know when to expect it to take off.
New Glenn’s inaugural mission (NG-1) will serve as its first Space Force national security certification flight, necessary to compete against the likes of SpaceX for Department of Defense and national intelligence contracts. Its reusable first stage is designed for at least 25 flights. Blue Origin has several New Glenn vehicles in production.
The Blue Ring Pathfinder
Blue Origin
Blue Origin describes New Glenn as “our giant, reusable rocket built for bigger things.” The “giant” bit is apt: The rocket stands over 320 ft (98 m) high. As for its “bigger things,” that includes the metaphorical (like potential missions to Mars) and literal: It can carry over 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO) and 13 to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). By comparison, rival SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy can lift nearly 64 metric tons to LEO and almost 27 to GTO orbit.
On its maiden voyage, New Glenn will carry a prototype of the company’s multipurpose Blue Ring Pathfinder. The craft is designed to transport, refuel and host satellites and other spacecraft and can carry three metric tons of cargo into space. Friday’s launch will test Blue Ring’s core flight / ground systems and operational capabilities.
Blue Origin
After New Glenn lifts off from Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, its reusable first stage will land on a barge, “Jacklyn,” floating several hundred miles away in the Atlantic Ocean.
New Glenn, named after pioneering astronaut John Glenn, completed its first launch countdown dress rehearsal on December 27. After several countdown attempts over a few hours, the rocket’s seven BE-4 engines ignited and fired for 24 seconds (spending 13 seconds at 100 percent thrust), paving the way for Friday’s targeted launch. The rocket’s first flight was initially slated for October, carrying two Mars-bound NASA satellites, but the launch was scrapped because it wouldn’t be ready by then.
Update 1/13/2025 3:18AM ET: Due to a technical problem, today's scheduled launch has been scrubbed. "We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt," Blue Origin wrote in a post on X.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/how-to-watch-blue-origins-inaugural-new-glenn-launch-013009830.html?src=rss
