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Five hundred kilometers above the Earth, a small spacecraft is waiting patiently for permission to return home. The autonomous return capsule, made by startup Varda Space Industries, of Torrance, CA, was meant to have landed in the remote Utah desert early in September. It would have been the first commercial space company to return a drug made in space to Earth, in this case a few grams of the HIV and hepatitis C antiviral ritonavir. Instead, the satellite, about the size of a large trash can and code-named Winnebago 1, continues to orbit the planet at nearly 30,000 kilometers per...

Pad : ARIANE LAUNCH AREA 1 Location : KOUROU, FRENCH GUIANA Rocket : VEGA Who is Arianespace? Arianespace SA is a multinational company founded in 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. It undertakes the operation, and marketing of the Ariane programme. Their vehicles launch exclusively from French Guiana in South America. What Is Vega? Vega is an expendable launch system in use by Arianespace jointly developed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Engines P80 The P80 used on the European Space Agency Vega rocket. IT is the largest and most powerful...

oom At 12:37 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. MDT), a helicopter gently placed NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, attached to the end of a 100-foot cable, on the ground outside a hangar on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Two technicians on the ground helped guide the capsule down. Once the helicopter line was detached and the helicopter had departed, the clean room team removed the capsule from its metal transport cradle. They loaded the capsule onto a cart and wheeled it into the hangar where a temporary clean room had been set up. In the hangar, the capsule...

Early morning on Sunday, Sept. 24, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s sample capsule will come face-to-face with Earth’s atmosphere for the first time since the mission’s 2016 launch. On board are an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams, of rocky material collected from the surface of Bennu in 2020 – NASA’s first asteroid sample and the largest ever collected in space. When it approaches Earth, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft won’t slow down as it makes its sample drop-off. Instead, when it reaches 63,000 miles (or 102,000 kilometers) above Earth’s surface – about one-third the distance from Earth to the Moon – a message...

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday warned that New York is “at capacity,” and urged newly arrived migrants to settle someplace else — as the Biden administration cleared the way for Venezuelan migrants to get work permits. Hochul told NY1 that granting Temporary Protective Status to and expediting work permits for thousands of Venezuelans who entered the US before July 31 is “an important first step,” in getting expedited work status for all migrants. But the governor warned that New York is “at capacity” and suggested that migrants who have arrived since July 31 consider other cities to settle in. “We...

The idea was that China's regime, given a stake in the existing system, would then defend it... By now, however, that bet looks like a mistake history will remember. For as the Communist Party grew stronger, it did not align itself with its Western supporters. On the contrary, it came to believe it could avenge centuries-old grievances and remake the world in its own image. The West's generous approach created the one thing it had hoped to avoid: an aggressive state redrawing its borders by force, attacking liberal values around the world, and undermining institutions at the heart of the...

NASA has announced the results of a independent study commissioned to determine how the agency can contribute to understanding unidentified anomalous phenomena. UAPs are defined as objects or events that can’t (yet) be traced back to known objects such as aircraft, balloons, drones, or known natural phenomena including aurora or special types of lightning. It’s worth noting that the panel in charge of this study was not commissioned to evaluate existing reports of UAPs (or UFOs, as they are more commonly known). The panel determined early on that they simply don’t have the data to evaluate past events, nor do...

This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on science data. K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth. A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI),...

India just became part of an exclusive club. With the successful touchdown of its Vikram lander today, it is now just the 4th nation to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon.This is a massive moment for India – and it bumps them up the space superpower list.Landing on the Moon is far from easy – as Russia’s attempt this week highlighted – and many missions have failed, including India’s first attempt.But it was second time lucky, and India now joins three other nations – the US, the former Soviet Union and China – who’ve successfully touched down on the lunar...

BENGALURU, Aug 23 (Reuters) - An Indian spacecraft landed on the moon on Wednesday, the space agency said, in a mission seen as crucial to lunar exploration and India's standing as a space power, just days after a similar Russian lander crashed. For India, the successful landing marks its emergence as a space power as the government looks to spur investment in private space launches and related satellite-based businesses.

India's space agency has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday. The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer. Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover are due to reach the surface on 23 August. If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled "soft landing" near the south pole. It will also become only the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for...

It’s been touted as a race to the lunar south pole, but there's much more to India's and Russia’s moon shots than who lands first. India's Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander launched on July 14 and entered lunar orbit on Aug. 5. It is currently lowering its orbit in preparation for a landing attempt that's expected to occur on Aug. 23. Meanwhile, Russia is making its first visit to the moon since 1976, when its Soviet-era sample return mission dubbed Luna-24 took place. Luna-25 launched on Aug. 10 and, having taken a more direct route to the moon, could make a landing...

The space race was still a thing when I was a kid but it hasn’t been for much of the last 45 years. But that’s starting to change as Russia, India, China and the US all gear up for various missions to the moon. In fact, both Russia and India have lunar landers touching down next week. Russia’s Luna-25 lander could touch down as soon as Monday, August 21. It’s the country’s first lunar mission in nearly half a century, and the first in the post-Soviet era. Two days later, on August 23, Chandrayaan-3 could become India’s first successful lunar...

Russia’s first lunar mission in nearly half a century came to a violent end when its unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after encountering a problem when it began preparing for pre-landing orbit. Russian officials had hoped the prestige mission would show they can still compete in space despite their post-Soviet decline and the extreme loss suffered in the Ukraine war. Its failure highlighted the intense decline of Russia’s authority over space since the days of the Cold War, when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite — Sputnik 1 — to orbit...

Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and smashed into moon. Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday. 'The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,' Roskosmos said in a statement. Moscow had earlier reported an 'abnormal situation' with the craft. 'During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which...

MOSCOW, August 20. /TASS/. The Luna-25 automatic lunar station, according to unconfirmed data, has been destroyed after colliding with the Moon’s surface, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told journalists on Sunday. The agency recalled that on August 19 that the lunar probe was scheduled to receive propulsion thrust to descend into its landing trajectory on the Moon's elliptical orbit. "At about 2:57 p.m. Decree time, the connection with the Luna-25 automatic lunar probe was lost," according to Roscosmos.

The first Russian spacecraft meant to land on the moon in nearly 50 years failed to enter its pre-landing orbit of the moon Saturday, according to Roscosmos, the Russian state space corporation. In a statement, the corporation said that an “abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters.” The spacecraft, Luna-25, was expected to land on the moon on Monday, and it is unclear now whether it will stick to that schedule. Roscosmos said the team was investigating the situation but did not give further details. It...

Russia's first moon mission in nearly half a century may be in serious trouble. The Luna-25 spacecraft was supposed to maneuver itself into its final pre-landing orbit around the moon today (Aug. 19), ahead of a touchdown attempt on Monday (Aug. 21) or thereabouts. But the probe encountered a problem during the engine burn. -snip- If Luna-25 is indeed dead, it would be quite a blow to Russia's space program. Luna-25 is the first moon mission developed by modern Russia, and the first for it or its forerunner state, the Soviet Union, since Luna-24 in 1976.

Russia's first moon mission in nearly half a century may be in serious trouble. The Luna-25 spacecraft was supposed to maneuver itself into its final pre-landing orbit around the moon today (Aug. 19), ahead of a touchdown attempt on Monday (Aug. 21) or thereabouts. But the probe encountered a problem during the engine burn. "During the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters," Russia's space agency Roscosmos wrote in an update on Telegram today (in Russian; translation by Google). "The management team is currently...

Russia has launched an uncrewed spacecraft to the Moon’s south pole — its first lunar mission in 47 years. If successful, the mission would be the first to land in the region, and could mark the start of considerable activity there involving multiple countries and private companies. -snip- Luna 25 launched aboard a Soyuz rocket at 11.11 p.m. UT on 10 August from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia — marking a move away from Russia’s dependence on Kazakhstan, which hosts its main launch site, the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It will take around 5 days for the spacecraft to reach a...