Boeing's Starliner heads back to hangar after valve issue thwarts test launch for NASA | Astronaut captures sparkling 'shooting star' video as Russian space station module falls to Earth | Chinese startup iSpace fails to reach orbit again with third launch of its Hyperbola-1 rocket
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Boeing's Starliner capsule will trudge back inside for more checks after skipping a Tuesday launch attempt when indications suggested a problem with a valve in the vehicle's propulsion system. Ground teams will roll the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket back into the Vertical Integration Facility at Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday (Aug. 5), NASA confirmed in a statement. The move allows engineers to directly access the Starliner capsule, which officials hope will help them track down the elusive valve issue.
From his perch on the International Space Station, a French astronaut watched a long-running Russian space module break into pieces in a shower of fireworks. What's more, he caught the event on video.
The latest failure of a Chinese commercial rocket may point to growing pains as the country opens its space sector to more private participation, according to a news report. The flight test of China's Hyperbola-1 rocket, built by the Chinese company iSpace, was unsuccessful, China's state media outlet Xinhua reported. This is the second failure of this rocket type in less than six months.
A weather satellite has recovered from a brief anomaly and is back to studying Earth and its ongoing wildfires. GOES-17 (Geostationary Orbital Environmental Satellite 17), an Earth-monitoring satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), suffered an anomaly on July 22.
Super Heavy is on the launch stand. On Tuesday (Aug. 3), SpaceX rolled its first true Super Heavy booster from its assembly facility in South Texas a few kilometers down the road to its launch site. And on Wednesday (Aug. 4), the company hoisted the 230-foot-tall (70 meters) rocket onto the launch stand using a giant crane.
Starship is powering up. SpaceX plans to launch the first orbital test flight of Starship, its reusable deep-space transportation system, in the next few months from the company's South Texas site, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica.
Perseid meteors are already beginning to fall in a display that promises to dazzle skywatchers this month. The Perseid meteor shower will peak on the evening of Aug. 12, just four days after the new moon on Aug. 8, so dark skies should be quite favorable for the annual display, which is one of the most dependable displays of "shooting stars." That's in stark contrast to next August, when the meteors will coincide with a full moon.
The first all-civilian mission on a SpaceX Crew Dragon is getting the star treatment. Netflix plans to produce a documentary, "Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space," following the adventures of the Inspiration4 crew scheduled to launch to space for a three-day mission later in 2021.
Russia's Nauka module briefly tilts space station with unplanned thruster fire | Boeing Starliner OFT-2 launch to space station delayed following Russian module mishap | Ariane 5 rocket launching 2 communications satellites today: Watch it live
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Nauka's bumpy ride to the International Space Station didn't get any smoother after the new Russian science module docked on Thursday (July 29). A little over three hours after docking was complete, cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov were preparing to open the hatch when thrusters on Nauka fired "inadvertently and unexpectedly," according to NASA spokesperson Rob Navias. As a result, the space station temporarily lost what engineers call "attitude control," which is quite rare, Navias noted. The crew is not in any danger.
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will have to wait to make its triumphant trip to space. On Thursday (July 29), officials at NASA and Boeing announced that Boeing's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) mission for its Starliner astronaut taxi will be delayed from Friday (July 30) to Tuesday (Aug. 3). This delay follows a mishap with Russia's Nauka module.
Europe's powerful Ariane 5 rocket will fly for the first time in nearly a year today (July 30), and you can watch the liftoff live. An Ariane 5 topped with two communications satellites is scheduled to launch from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, this evening during a 90-minute window that opens at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). You can watch the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of Ariane 5 operator Arianespace, or directly via the French company.
In a brand-new video, you can watch Ingenuity make its highest and most complex flight to date, which took the autonomous craft over an area known as Raised Ridges. During this trip, its 10th flight, Ingenuity covered a distance of 310 feet (95 meters) and soared to a record altitude of 40 feet (12 meters).
Bright reflections that radar detected beneath the south pole of Mars may not be underground lakes as previously thought but deposits of clay instead, a new study finds.
New data from the star-mapping Gaia satellite are helping scientists unlock the mystery of our Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms. Recently published studies exploring the Early Data Release 3 (EDR3), a batch of observations made available to the scientific community last December, reveal the spiral structure of our galaxy with a greater precision and detail than was possible before.
SpaceX's Super Heavy booster is a complicated beast. On Thursday (July 29), SpaceX chief Elon Musk gave us an inside look at the engine section of a Super Heavy that's coming together at the company's South Texas site, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica. There is a lot of plumbing involved.
It's safe to say that UFOs, now branded UAPs, are back. In recent years, concerns have grown that supposed physics-defying craft are penetrating US airspace. This could represent a technological breakthrough by foreign competitors or something else entirely. But many people will no doubt have found the recent release of the Pentagon's highly anticipated UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) report to be underwhelming.
