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VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo, glides during a flight test last December. WASHINGTON — The chief executive of Virgin Galactic said Sept. 7 that the company’s second suborbital spaceplane was “at the edge” of beginning powered test flights , after at least one more glide flight. George Whitesides, speaking at the 20th Annual International Mars […]

Instead of “energize,” a famous “Star Trek: Voyager” cast member has a new command for the almost-finished Cassini mission at Saturn: “Vaporize!” Robert Picardo, best known for playing an “Emergency Medical Hologram” (doctor) on the TV series “Star Trek: Voyager,” belts out a classic opera tune in tribute to Cassini, which will plunge into Saturn’s […]

Now we know what SpaceX’s new spacesuit looks like from head to toe. On Friday (Sept. 8), SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted a photo on Instagram of a spacesuit-clad person standing next to the Dragon capsule. The company is developing that spacecraft to fly people to and from the International Space Station (ISS), among […]

PASADENA, Calif. — The end is nigh for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which is now less than 48 hours away from its scheduled death dive into Saturn .  At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California, mission scientists are now preparing to receive Cassini’s final data transmissions early Friday morning (Sept. 13). Heat and friction […]

Kars Park I is seen during an aerial survey of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 12, 2017. The survey was performed to identify structures and facilities that may have sustained damage from Hurricane Irma as the storm passed Kennedy on Sept. 10, 2017. NASA closed the center ahead of the storm’s onset […]

[embedded content] To document the dramatic final days of the Cassini spacecraft’s mission at Saturn, the next season of the PBS show “NOVA” will premiere with a 1-hour program called “Death Dive to Saturn ” tonight (Sept. 13) at 9 p.m. EDT (8 p.m. CDT). The WGBH Boston production team behind the Cassini special will […]

The plumes of liquid water spewing into space through cracks in the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus are another highlight of Cassini’s productive mission. The spacecraft found at least 101 sites where geysers erupt. These eruption sites tend to be in the “tiger stripes” (cracks) on the surface of the icy moon. The spacecraft […]

Update: “The Farthest” rebroadcast air date has been moved to Nov. 15, rather than tonight. “The Farthest,” an amusing and inspiring new documentary about the farthest-traveling spacecraft ever launched, will return to PBS Nov. 15 for a national encore. So, if you haven’t had a chance to check it out, prepare to tune in then […]

By Chris Arrant, Newsarama Editor | September 12, 2017 12:00pm ET Credit: Lucasfilm J.J. Abrams has agreed to return to the “Star Wars” franchise  to co-write/direct/produce 2019’s “Star Wars: Episode IX.” This comes after the departure of original director Colin Trevorrow . “With ‘The Force Awakens,’ J.J. delivered everything we could have possibly hoped for, and I […]

PARIS — International Launch Services last night (Sept. 11) conducted the second of three commercial Proton launches planned for this year, completing a nine hour and 12-minute mission carrying Hispasat’s Amazonas-5 satellite. Proton lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome  at 3:23 p.m. EDT (1923 GMT), using its first three stages to reach a suborbital trajectory, […]

Update: The Soyuz MS-06 successfully docked at the International Space Station’s Poisk module at 10:55 p.m. EDT (0255 GMT) after a nearly six-hour flight.    Two NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut successfully launched toward the International Space Station  (ISS) Tuesday (Sept. 12). NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Alexander […]

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe made the most accurate celestial observations of his time and challenged the prevailing belief in how the universe was organized. And while most people may think of scientists as stodgy academic types, Brahe’s flamboyant lifestyle and ignominious death would have made some of today’s wild celebrities look like choirboys. A colorful […]

Expedition 53/54 crewmembers (left to right) Joe Acaba, Alexander Misurkin and Mark Vande Hei pose for a photograph outside the Soyuz simulator ahead of their Soyuz qualification exams on Aug. 31, 2017, at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. Three Expedition 53 crewmembers will blast off to the International Space Station today […]