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SAN FRANCISCO—Firefly Aerospace won a contract to launch Quicksounder, a prototype for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's next generation of environmental satellites in low-Earth orbit. The value of the prize was not disclosed. NASA awarded the contract to Texas-based Firefly on behalf of NOAA through Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare Risk Class (Launch Services
PARIS – Lockheed Martin has won a $297.1 million contract to develop lightning mappers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s future geostationary constellation. The contract announced Sept. 17 requires Lockheed Martin to develop two flight instruments and includes options for two additional lightning mappers. Lockheed Martin will also support each lightning mapper for a
33 The Soyuz MS-26 crewed mission has carried NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch took place on Wednesday, September 11, at 16:23 UTC from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the ISS just over
WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched the latest in its series of rideshare missions on Aug. 16, putting more than 100 satellites into orbit for commercial and government customers. Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:56 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Transporter-11 mission. The booster rocket, on its 12th flight,
The CHAPEA crew stands in front of their simulated mission to Mars after its completion on July 6, 2024. From left: Kelly Haston, Nathan Jones, Anca Selariu, and Ross Brockwell. Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel Last June, a group of four people embarked on a more than yearlong mission to a place that looked a lot like
47 After a week in which Tropical Storm Alberto caused high seas, wind and rain-related delays to the launch schedule in Florida, SpaceX hopes to get back on track this week with launches planned for all three active launch pads of Falcon, including a Heavy Falcon. Towards the end of the week, the Japan Exploration
WASHINGTON – A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off June 25 carrying the latest spacecraft in a series of geostationary weather satellites that also features several firsts. The Falcon Heavy lifted off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A at 5:26 p.m. Eastern Time, 10 minutes into a two-hour window, as launch directors encountered favorable
This image shows spectacular ribbons of gas and dust enveloping the pearly center of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1398. This galaxy is located in the constellation Fornax (El Horno), approximately 65 million light years away. Instead of starting at the center of the galaxy and spinning outward, NGC 1398's elegant spiral arms emerge from
It's starting to look a lot like Christmas in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a blizzard of stars, resembling a swirling storm in a snowball. These stars form the globular cluster Messier 79, located about 40,000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Lepus (The Hare). Globular clusters are gravitationally bound groupings
In one of the largest known star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, bright young stellar clusters known as OB associations are found. One of these associations, called LH 72, was captured in this spectacular image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It consists of a
