CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The private Athena lunar lander is on its way to the moon. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off shortly after sunset this evening (Feb. 26), carrying Athena and NASA’s ride-along Lunar Trailblazer orbiter aloft against a darkening sky here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Athena — which was built … Read more
An artist’s concept shows SPHEREx in orbit around Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech An infrared space telescope is scheduled to launch this week to map the sky not once but four times, and with unrivaled clarity. With a launch date as early as Friday, Feb. 28, NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization … Read more
As far as we can tell, life needs water. Cells can’t perform their functions without it. Some have suggested that other exotic liquids, like liquid methane, could do the job on worlds like Saturn’s moon Titan. That idea is highly speculative, though. So, it makes sense that NASA is launching a spacecraft dedicated to the … Read more
WASHINGTON — In a mission veiled in secrecy, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Dec. 16 at 7:52 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, sending a military Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite to a medium orbit about 12,000 miles above Earth. Named Rapid Response Trailblazer-1 (RRT-1), this mission was a U.S. … Read more