Tag Archives: Nasa

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is scaling back its activities around the Mars Return Sample mission in anticipation of potential budgetary cuts to the program in light of the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill. According to JPL director Laurie Leshin, NASA is anticipating a federal budget that could limit spending on the Mars Sample Return mission at $300 million for the 2024 fiscal year, 36% of the previous year’s $ 822 million budget.

STEM and Space education is crucial for the future of our world. The workforce of the future need to be inspired and see a career in space as a viable opportunity. Seen as viable not just by young people but by parents, teachers and industry. Inspiration is key and the best way to inspire is to engage. That’s what STEM and Space education organisation One Giant Leap Australia does best.

Redwire Corporation has announced that two 5-kW Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSA) have successfully deployed and are operating nominally in geosynchronous orbit on the Maxar Space Systems-built Ovzon 3 communications satellite. The satellite successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. Ovzon 3 represents the first-ever integration of Redwire’s ROSA technology with a commercial satellite following years of successful operations on the International Space Station (ISS) and on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

Sustainability reporting SaaS company Earth Blox has announced its availability on Google Cloud Marketplace. The company provides customers with a scalable and customisable platform to rapidly assess climate and nature-related risks and impacts for millions of assets and facilities worldwide. Google Cloud Marketplace lets users quickly deploy functional software packages that run on Google Cloud and allows customers to easily start up a familiar software package with services like Compute Engine or Cloud Storage, with no manual configuration required.

The schedules for Artemis II and Artemis III have been postponed to September 2025 for Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, and September 2026 for Artemis III, which is planned to land the first astronauts near the lunar South Pole, NASA announced. 

The possible cause of Peregrine spacecrafts's propulsion anomaly might be a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer, which might have failed to reseal after actuation during inizialization, Astrobotic announced on their X channel. 

By nighttime stateside, early European/Middle East/Africa morning today, and mid-day in Asia, the successfully launched Astrobotic Peregrine lander was confirmed having run into problems terminally dooming Mission 1. Astrobotic’s confirmed the issue reporting on their social media and press releases. And like with any failure, let’s take a healing look at facts and lessons learned. The first lesson is the obvious one: yes, space is hard. 

NASA and the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have announced plans for MBRSC to provide an airlock for Gateway, humanity’s first space station that will orbit the Moon. Under a new implementing arrangement expanding their human spaceflight collaboration with NASA through Gateway, MBRSC will provide Gateway’s Crew and Science Airlock module, as well as a UAE astronaut to fly to the lunar space station on a future Artemis mission.

Astrobotic has launched its Peregrine Lunar Lander aboard United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s inaugural Vulcan-1 rocket from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex-41. The Peregrine Lander mission represents the US's first soft landing on the lunar surface since the Apollo missions. Likewise, for ULA, the launch serves as the launcher's first certification mission first of two certification launches that the Vulcan rocket has to complete before it can be put under consideration for national security space missions. Other than Astrobotic's lander, Vulcan also launched Celestis Memorial Spaceflight's deep space Voyager mission, the Enterprise Flight.

NASA has modified agreements for two funded commercial space station partners that are on track to develop low Earth orbit destinations for NASA and other customers as the International Space Station retires in 2030. The changes add new technical milestones and reallocate existing funding to allow the agency to accelerate efforts as part of NASA’s goal to foster a commercial low-Earth orbit economy.