SpaceX’s massive Super Heavy booster stage now stands (very) high on the company’s launch pad in sin Texas, pending a series of final tests and verifications. The company is eager to launch the fully-stacked Starship rocket for flight testing as early as July, but a number of regulatory hurdles still stand in the way. The … Read more
A view of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef from low Earth orbit (shown at 8x normal speed). GIF: NanoAvionics/Gizmodo Proprietary space cameras are expensive, limited and difficult to develop. Small satellite maker NanoAvionics recently steered clear of any development hassles and opted for something off-the-shelf instead. The company used a GoPro Hero 7 mounted on a … Read more
The newly formed twin crater, spotted on the far side of the Moon near Hertzsprung crater. Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University Observations made by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have allowed scientists to pinpoint the location where a mysterious object – likely an abandoned rocket body – crashed into the Moon several months ago. The crash site … Read more
SpaceX is building a towering new gantry at Kennedy Space Center’s Complex 39A to launch its 394-foot-tall Super Heavy-Starship rocket, but NASA said Thursday it won’t grant permission to fly until it has would not have assessed possible threats to a nearby pad used to send astronauts to the space station. The new gantry and … Read more
Space oddity: The exhaust plume from one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets leaves a strange blue spiral in the night sky over New Zealand The fuel dump from one of Elon Musk’s space rockets lit up New Zealand’s skies As the rocket spun to vent its fuel, it caused a vapor trail that reflected sunlight … Read more
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched Germany’s SARah 1 military imaging satellite into orbit on June 18.Photo: SpaceX It was a busy weekend for SpaceX, with the private space company launching three of its Falcon 9 rockets into orbit over a three-day period. SpaceX’s final launch may even have carried a classified government payload in addition … Read more
The Cygnus space cargo ship approaches the ISS on February 21, 2022. Photo: Nasa NASA is currently evaluating the ability of the docked Cygnus spacecraft to serve as boosters for the International Space Station, but a recent test of the concept was quickly shut down, for reasons that are still unclear. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus NG … Read more
The blue spiral appeared in the night sky over New Zealand on Sunday. New Zealand astronomers were startled by strange spiraling light formations in the night sky on Sunday evening. The photos have been widely shared on social media, with many New Zealanders comparing them to some sort of ‘wormhole’. But experts said the “wacky … Read more
Ahead of the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner, NASA has chosen two astronauts to fly aboard the struggling spacecraft, in a mission that could launch later this year. Friday, NASA announcement that veteran astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will fly aboard the Crew Flight Test (CFT), whose launch date will be determined … Read more
California-based Astra launched two shoebox-sized NASA satellites from Cape Canaveral on Sunday in a modest mission to improve hurricane predictions, but the second stage of the low-cost booster of the company malfunctioned before reaching orbit and the payloads were lost. “Upper stage shut down early and we did not deliver payloads to orbit,” Astra tweeted. … Read more