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NASA has postponed the launch of the ESCAPADE mission to Mars until at least spring 2025. The decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule, and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft if there were delays. ESCAPADE, which stands for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics
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A high-altitude balloon identified as a Stratollite, developed by World View Enterprises, was observed floating over Northern Colorado, including the Denver area. This balloon is carrying a NASA payload designed to measure solar radiation in the stratosphere. Named the Gryphon Stratolite, it operates at altitudes between 45,000 and 75,
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A small asteroid, named 2024 RW1, was discovered by NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey just hours before it entered Earth's atmosphere over the Philippines on September 4, 2024. Measuring approximately 1 meter in diameter, the asteroid created a bright fireball as it burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere.
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NASA has successfully deployed its Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), achieving a significant milestone in solar sail technology. The deployment, confirmed through telemetry data, marks the first time the system's sail-hoisting boom has been fully extended. The solar sail, which spans 80 square meters, was launched from
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NASA's Endurance mission has successfully measured Earth's ambipolar electric field, a planet-wide phenomenon first hypothesized over 60 years ago. This weak electric field, believed to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields, plays a crucial role in driving the "polar wind,
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NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick has garnered significant attention for his latest photograph capturing the moon setting over the Pacific Ocean. Shared on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the image features the moon with a striking blue hue in the foreground, attributed to the clouds and Earth's
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NASA has announced that astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been on the International Space Station (ISS) since June, will return to Earth in February 2025 via SpaceX's Dragon capsule. This decision comes after concerns over the safety of Boeing's Starliner capsule, which experienced
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Airbus has been selected by the French Space Agency (CNES) to design and build two next-generation microwave radiometers for the NASA/JAXA climate satellite mission, as part of the French contribution to the Atmosphere Observing System (AOS). The mission, named C²OMODO (Convective Core Observations through Microwave Derivatives in the
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NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission has provided new insights into the binary asteroid system of Didymos and Dimorphos. Led by Olivier Barnouin and Ronald-Louis Ballouz of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the study utilized data from DART and the LICIACube cubesat, revealing significant geological details. Didymos,