Tagged: spaceship

Spaceport America hours before Virgin Galactic flight in a radar image

Wednesday, July 14, 2021: Spaceport America in New Mexico captured in a radar image two hours before the successful launch of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo on Sunday (July 11). The image was acquired by a satellite operated by San Francisco-based Capella Space, which is developing an innovative...

How to calculate the odds that an alien spaceship has been spotted

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Anders Sandberg, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford The U.S. military has released previously classified photos...

NASA spacecraft begins 2-year trip home with asteroid rubble

With rubble from an asteroid tucked inside, a NASA spacecraft fired its engines and began the long journey back to Earth on Monday, leaving the ancient space rock in its rearview mirror. The trip home for the robotic prospector, Osiris-Rex, will take two years. Osiris-Rex...

Teaching an old spacecraft new tricks to continue exploring the moon

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has far exceeded its planned mission duration, revealing that the Moon holds surprises: ice deposits that could be used to support future lunar exploration, the coldest places in the solar system in permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles,...

Keeping track of spacecraft as Earth’s water alters its spin

Mass is constantly being redistributed around our planet, as Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and other bodies of water on and under the surface melt, shift and stir. This mass redistribution alters Earth’s center of gravity, which in turn speeds up and slows down the planet’s spin—and...

NASA begins final assembly of spacecraft destined for asteroid Psyche

A major component of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has been delivered to the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations is now underway. Over the next year, the spacecraft will finish assembly and undergo rigorous checkout...