Tag Archives: Nasa

SpaceWatch.Global has been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. This is “A giant piece of space junk is hurtling towards Earth. Here’s how worried you should be”, originally published 4 May 2021 at The Conversation by Steven Freeland.

Following complaints by competitors, the U.S. space agency NASA suspended SpaceX’s work on the Human Landing System (HLS). Pursuant to protests of Blue Origin and Dynetics to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), NASA “instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended”, NASA said.

A 100 day track record: “In just the first 100 days of their administration, President Biden and Vice President Harris have expressed strong support for NASA’s goals and missions – and have laid out a vision that will guide the agency for the years to come,” said acting NASA Chief of Staff Bhavya Lal.

During this week’s SpaceCafé, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with self-confessed “spaceist”, astronautics and space engineering expert from the International Space University, Professor Chris Welch. Now the Head of the Space Payloads Laboratory at the ISU, Professor Welch’s career in space engineering has spanned several decades across multiple universities and institutions.

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Laura Seward Forczyk, owner of space consulting firm Astralytical, Atlanta, USA, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. My Ticket to Space! This Space Café will focus on the status of commercial human spaceflight. We will try to answer questions on suborbital vs orbital flight or commercial space stations.

Luxembourg, 27 April 2021. – “Faster and farther”: NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity flew a third time, rising five meters high and 50 meters far at a top speed of 2 meters per second, the U.S. space agency said. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California received a first bunch of data and images that the Perseverance rover, serving as a communications base station, captured.

Luxemburg, 26 April 2021. – Welcome to the ISS: the “first human spaceflight mission to fly astronauts on a flight-proven Falcon 9 and Dragon” docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday. The four Crew-2 astronauts had spent around 23 hours orbiting Earth before catching up with the ISS.

Paris, 23 April 2021. – The German Aerospace Center (DLR) wants to land a radiation detector on the Moon onboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander in 2021, Astrobotic said. DLR will send the detector to measure key radiation data on the flight to the Moon and on the lunar surface.

Paris, 22 April 2021. – Another breakthrough: NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance was able to extract oxygen from the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, the U.S. space agency said. “While the technology demonstration is just getting started, it could pave the way for science fiction to become science fact – isolating and storing oxygen on Mars”, NASA said.

Paris, 22 April 2021. – SpaceX and NASA are targeting tomorrow, Friday, 23 April, for the Crew-2 launch to the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX said. Falcon 9’s launch of Dragon’s second six-month operational crew mission to the ISS is scheduled for Friday, with a back-up opportunity on Monday, SpaceX said.