Tag Archives | space.com

Apollo 1: The Fatal Fire

The Apollo 1 crew, from left to right, Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The Apollo program changed forever on Jan. 27, 1967, when a flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a launch rehearsal test. The three men inside perished despite the best efforts of the ground crew. […]

Continue Reading

BAE Systems Wins DARPA Contract to Develop 3D Space Warfare Lab

DARPA’s virtual lab would help U.S. military “quickly evaluate and integrate technologies for space command and control.” WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded BAE Systems a contract worth up to $12.8 million to develop a digital lab to help U.S. military commanders prepare for combat in outer space, the company announced Nov. 14 […]

Continue Reading

XCOR Aerospace Files for Bankruptcy

XCOR Aerospace had been working for nearly a decade on the Lynx suborbital spaceplane, but technical and financial issues kept it from completing a prototype. WASHINGTON — XCOR Aerospace, a company that for nearly 20 years had been working on rocket engines and a suborbital spaceplane, filed for bankruptcy Nov. 8  after it was unable to […]

Continue Reading

High Winds Delay Launch of Advanced Weather Satellite JPSS-1

A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket carrying the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 weather satellite stands atop Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. An attempted launch on Nov. 15, 2017 was delayed by high winds. An advanced new weather satellite will now launch into space no earlier than Thursday (Nov. […]

Continue Reading

SpaceX Delays Launch of Secret Zuma Mission to Thursday

A spaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands atop Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for a commercial satellite launch in October 2017 in this file photo. SpaceX will launch the secret Zuma mission for the U.S. government on Nov. 16, 2017. SpaceX’s planned launch of a secret Zuma payload for the U.S. government has […]

Continue Reading

What Is Earth Made Of?

The space shuttle Endeavor captured this image of the San Andreas Fault on Feb. 11, 2000. The fault marks the slippery yet sticky boundary between two of Earth’s tectonic plates, where the North America plate meets the Pacific plate. Earth is unique among the known planets: it has an abundance of water. Other worlds — […]

Continue Reading
Venus

Solar System Planets: Order of the 8 (or 9) Planets

The planets of the solar system as depicted by a NASA computer illustration. Orbits and sizes are not shown to scale. Ever since the discovery of Pluto in 1930, kids grew up learning about the nine planets of our solar system. That all changed starting in the late 1990s, when astronomers began to argue about […]

Continue Reading

New Camera Will Search for Star Explosions and Other Quick Changes in the Cosmos

A powerful new camera that will help scientists search for exploding stars and fast-moving objects in Earth’s solar system has captured its first image of the night sky. The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is officially up and running at the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory in the mountains northeast of San Diego. Its primary […]

Continue Reading

Space, astronomy and science