Tag: Aerospace

SpaceX’s first astronaut mission could take off in May

SpaceX is getting very close to its goal of flying actual astronauts aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft. After a successful in-flight abort (IFA) test in January, it had basically crossed off all the major milestones needed before flying people, first on a demonstration mission referred to as “Demo-2” by SpaceX…

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2021 NASA budget request includes $3.3B for human lunar landers, $430M for Moon resource development

The Trump White House today issued its fiscal 2021 budget request, and it included a 12% increase in requested funding to NASA’s coffers, as expected. That puts the total request for NASA at $25.2 billion, nearly half, or $12.3 billion, of which is earmarked specifically to support NASA’s efforts to…

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Max Q: A SpaceX spin-out sounds great

Max Q is a new weekly newsletter all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Sundays in your inbox. Two rocket launches were set to take off Sunday, including one from Wallops Island in Virginia and another from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first is a relatively…

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NASA and ESA’s Solar Orbiter begins its nearly two year journey to the Sun

After years of development, an exciting new scientific research spacecraft has launched on its journey to study our solar system’s central player: the Sun. The Solar Orbiter, developed jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) and built by Airbus, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in…

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Watch two rocket launches live, including a Space Station supply flight and a mission to study the Sun

[embedded content] There are two – that’s right two – launches happening this Sunday, and both are set to broadcast live on NASA’s official stream above. The first is a NASA International Space Station resupply mission, with a Norhtrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft launching aboard an Antares rocket from Wallops Island in…

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NASA confirms two Boeing Starliner issues would’ve led to spacecraft loss without intervention

NASA and Boeing are sharing more details about the issues that were encountered during the Boeing CST-100 Starliner crew spacecraft uncrewed demo mission in December, and their progress on investigating the causes and implementing fixes. In a new blog post, NASA lays out the three different specific issues that occurred,…

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