‘It was a miracle.’ Amazing tales of dead spacecraft that came back to life

The CIRBE cubesat in the clean room at the University of Boulder, Colorado.

The hulk of metal moved silently through space, high above the blue Earth. Power no longer coursed through its wires, its instruments were dead to the outside universe, and its communications antenna was silent. To all intents and purposes it was deceased, and almost everyone back home had given up on it. Almost everyone. Despite … Read more

NASA moves up return date for Boeing Starliner astronauts after swapping SpaceX Dragon spacecraft

NASA has decided to shuffle around some SpaceX Dragon capsules in order to launch its Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station as soon as possible. The agency is now targeting March 12 for the launch of Crew-10, which will carry three astronauts and a cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS). The four crewmembers … Read more

Piece of Apollo 11 spacecraft ‘lands’ in moon meteorite-lined wedding ring

For better or for worse, a small part of the Apollo 11 spacecraft will now be Jon Mesick’s to have and to hold for all the days of his life. The strip of golden thermal polyimide tape, which made the trip to the moon with the first astronauts to land there in 1969, is now … Read more

Shattered Genesis spacecraft yields scientific discoveries 20 years after crash landing

In September 2004, NASA’s Genesis return sample capsule tumbled from the sky and slammed into the Utah desert in a remote part of the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground, shattering the delicate solar wind collectors it carried. The upshot of that downfall: new scientific insights following over 20 years of painstaking work by researchers sorting … Read more