Deep space is the ultimate focus of Exploration Flight Test-1, because the Orion capsule is the vehicle that will keep crew members alive during some of the most dynamic minutes of missions to the “proving ground,” around the Moon and, ultimately Mars.
Japan is scheduled to launch Hayabusa-2 on a six-year mission to return samples from the asteroid 1999 JU3. Four landers are designed to explore the C-type asteroid’s surface before the main spacecraft itself touches down for two or three grab-and-go sample harvests.
NASA’s go-as-you-can-pay approach to exploration-system development means the heavy-lift Space Launch System in development to carry Orion beyond low Earth orbit and eventually on to Mars is very much a work in progress, starting with the engines.
The inevitable has happened in the U.S. attempt to move the economy off the planet. That it happened twice in a week is driving a needed element of reality into the endeavor.
The future of A&D is looking good judging by the accomplishments and drive of the young innovators—the lifeblood of the next generation—in this Aviation Week-Raytheon feature.
Orbital Sciences remained mum on a replacement engine for its ISS cargo carrier last week, but Russian news outlets have identified the new kerosene-fueled RD-193 developed by NPO Energomash as the chosen one.
While the SpaceShipTwo crash investigation continues, the full impact on the vehicle’s design and operations, as well as the effect on Virgin Galactic’s schedule, remains unclear.
Europe's Philae robotic probe touched down on the dusty surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on Nov. 12, marking a historic achievement in planetary exploration.
Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to re-engine its Antares launch vehicle and use one or two alternate launch vehicles initially to meet its International Space Station resupply commitments to NASA after last week’s launch failure.
The lessons the Antares failure board learns will be applied to future commercial spaceflight contracts for cargo—and eventually crew—as NASA continues to shift U.S. access to low Earth orbit onto privately owned vehicles.
Boeing's first of four satellites for Inmarsat's Global Xpress network, has passed all of its on-orbit testing and has now been handed over to Inmarsat.
After astronauts install a special 3-D printer in the ISS’s Microgravity Science Glovebox and set up the high-definition video cameras that will watch its extruder and work platform from two different angles, controllers at a small startup company in California will send signals to begin making things in orbit.
Boeing and SpaceX are preceding apace with their plans for commercial crew space capsules, now that the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals ruled against Sierra Nevada’s protest.
Contingency planning and the multi-vehicle approach to supplying the International Space Station will mitigate the effects of the worst accident to hit human spaceflight since the Columbia disaster, but not without some belt-tightening and lesson-learning in the months ahead.
Investigation team says 2 sec. before beginning to break up in midair, the vehicle's two moveable tail booms unexpectedly began to deploy into a feathering position.
