In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon and scientists want to take full advantage of its visit.
It’s been a wild and wacky last few weeks in space, not to mention awe-inspiring, as a spectacular total solar eclipse graced the skies across North America. We also said goodbye to a trusty old rocket, while saying hello to what might finally be the first crewed mission of Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner spacecraft.
Update: April 9, 1:20 p.m. ET: The triple-core rocket blasted off today on time, in what appears to be a successful launch and deployment.
Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos, is finally setting some ambitious timelines, saying it plans to conduct an uncrewed Moon landing in as little as a year from now, deploying a demonstration version of its Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) cargo lander. This ramps up the space rivalry big time, putting…
Asteroid 99942 Apophis is fast approaching our home planet for an uncomfortably close encounter in 2029. In order to prepare for the rare event, NASA is calling for ideas for low cost missions to rendezvous with Apophis, but the space agency already has a pair of asteroid probes ready to take on the task.
Starlab Space’s forthcoming space station is so big and heavy that only the formidable SpaceX Starship megarocket can launch it into orbit, but the one-time delivery option comes with distinct benefits.
Commercial faster-than-sound travel over land doesn’t happen anymore—but in the U.S., it could soon, with the debut of a new experimental plane developed by NASA and Lockheed Martin. The X-59 aircraft is designed to test out sonic boom-less supersonic flight, producing only sonic ‘thumps’ as it speeds through the…
Failure in space dominated our headlines this week, with Astrobotic’s uncrewed lunar lander mission Peregrine-1 experiencing critical issues shortly after leaving Earth. Back on the ground, though, NASA finally—after months of trying—succeeded in opening the container filled with samples plucked from the asteroid…
