NASA’s plans to retire the International Space Station and replace it with commercial projects are not kaput, they’re just changing. Wrinkles are now appearing in Blue Origin’s plans for Orbital Reef, while Northrop Grumman’s unnamed space station project might not even happen.
After staying on board the International Space Station (ISS) for more than a year, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio has finally returned home with a new record of the longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut.
The International Space Station (ISS) has been orbiting Earth for 24 years, hosting crews of astronauts and running experiments in the microgravity environment. By 2030, however, the space station’s reign in low Earth orbit must come to an end and NASA is figuring out exactly how to do that.
Despite holding the title for the longest stint in space by a NASA astronaut, Frank Rubio would have rather not spent all that extra time in low Earth orbit and away from his family.
After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns.
If there’s one drink you should pack with you on a future trip to space, let it be kombucha. The fizzy, fermented drink has not only taken over trendy spots in Brooklyn, but it can also be found in low Earth orbit as part of an ongoing experiment of its resilience in the harsh space environment.
When astronaut Frank Rubio launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in September 2022, he was scheduled to return back to Earth in six months’ time. Rubio’s ride to his home planet, however, suffered a malfunction that left him stranded in low Earth orbit.
Picking up the trash in space could be as easy as stuffing pieces of defunct spacecraft into a giant bag, closing it up, and tossing the pesky space junk into an orbital recycling plant. At least that’s what space startup TransAstra hopes to do with its inflatable capture bag.
NASA is getting ready to launch the next crew of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) after SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft was declared a “go” for launch earlier this week.
In a sad case of debris-on-debris crime, a defunct payload adapter that was chosen as the subject of a space debris cleanup mission was itself hit by a piece of space junk.
