February 24th, 2025
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Firefly Aerospace has completed a third and final lunar orbit maneuver of its Blue Ghost Moon lander. Taking place early Monday morning, the Moon-circling lander carried out a 16-second burn of reaction control system thrusters, thereby inserting itself into a near-circular low orbit. Up next…going down This critical February 24 maneuver sets up the spacecraft […]
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Enter the “wait-a-minute” world of space stations. Early this morning I saw the International Space Station slip across my Colorado mountain skyline. I waved, but I don’t think they saw me. But I did ponder the early demise of this huge human outpost in Earth orbit. Incremental utility? “It is time to begin preparations for […]
Back in 1976, the dual NASA Viking landers came to full stop on the Red Planet. Their life detection experimental findings still reverberate within the scientific community – fueling the on-going discussion on a key question: Is there life on Mars? Fast forward to today, a new paper tackles and reconsiders the results of the […]
China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft, designed to sample an asteroid, is now at the launch site and slated for launch in the first half of this year. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has announced the craft is at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Tianwen-2’s targets: Collect samples from near-Earth asteroid 2016 […]
The Polish Space Agency’s (POLSA) Department of Space Security Team has confirmed that on February 19 there was an uncontrolled atmospheric entry of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket body that occurred over the territory of Poland. The rocket stage, weighing approximately four tons, came from the Space X Starlink Group 11-4 mission, launched on February […]
Intuitive Machines announced its IM-2 mission Nova-C class lunar lander, Athena, has completed all integration milestones. The lunar lander is safely encapsulated within SpaceX’s payload fairing in preparation for launch. A multi-day launch window opens no earlier than February 26 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Trio of lunar landers […]
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first and only exploration flyby of the Pluto system, culminating at the closest approach of that distant world in July of 2015. Sailing onward, the vehicle carried out a January 1, 2019 flyby of Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object, or KBO, located in a region of space beyond […]
The Firefly Moon landing team reports that a second lunar orbit maneuver has been attained. Their Blue Ghost commercial lander performed a 3 minute, 18 second burn. Blue Ghost Mission-1 will deliver 10 science and technology instruments to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. “This maneuver moved the […]
NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI) has released the 2024 State-of-the-Art Small Spacecraft Technology report. This informative and detailed 2024 edition reflects updates in several areas, including formation flying and rendezvous and proximity operations, additive manufacturing, free space optical communications and hosted orbital services. Invaluable insights The document provides invaluable insights in numerous […]
Once again the Philippine Space Agency was on guard for possible rocket debris stemming from China’s recent launch of a Long March 8A rocket from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Wenchang, Hainan. The maiden flight of the Long March 8A booster took place on February 11, reportedly hurling into orbit a set of satellites for […]
