Washington DC (UPI) Mar 14, 2021
After years of delay, NASA plans to roll its massive new SLS moon rocket out of the historic Vehicle Assembly Building and onto it's launch pad for the first time Thursday. The rollout will be the first time a NASA rocket so large - 322 feet tall - has moved to a launch pad since Apollo 17's Saturn V rocket did so before launching astronauts to the moon in 1972. Space shuttles

Washington DC (UPI) Mar 14, 2021
California-based Astra Space scrubbed the launch of a rocket from Alaska on Monday due to a potential for lightning in the area, company officials said. The attempt was its first return to a launchpad since the company's stock plunged after it suffered a rocket failure during launch of a NASA mission from Florida on Feb. 10. "Astra scrubbing for the day, due to triggered lightnin

Washington (AFP) March 14, 2022
NASA on Monday insisted tensions linked to the war in Ukraine had no impact on International Space Station operations or the planned return of an American astronaut aboard a Russian capsule later this month. Mark Vande Hei is due to fly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov on March 30 after 355 days in space

NASA will hold a virtual media briefing at noon EDT Wednesday, March 16, to provide an update on the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirror alignment.

ESA’s NAVISP programme – helping to invent the future of European navigation – is probing the science of the very small. The aim is to employ hyper-sensitive quantum technology-based sensors as supplementary navigation solutions, including tracking local variations in gravity that could be matched onto regional and global gravity maps.

Leeds UK (SPX) Mar 11, 2022
Scientists reveal a new part of the recipe for complex life on planets, and it involves the onset of a microbial fertilizer factory on the Earth's seafloor roughly 2.6 billion years ago. The first major rise in oxygen levels on the Earth took place roughly 2.4 to 2.2 billion years ago during the early stage of the Great Oxidation Event. Scientists are still unsure why and how the Gre

Washington DC (SPX) Mar 11, 2022
Over the past two decades, the Arctic has lost about one-third of its winter sea ice volume, largely due to a decline in sea ice that persists over several years, called multiyear ice, according to a new study. The study also found sea ice is likely thinner than previous estimates. Seasonal sea ice, which melts completely each summer rather than accumulating over years, is replacing thicke