Science
- Blue OriginCommercialOtherScience
Blue Origin launches ESCAPADE on New Glenn, successfully lands first stage booster
Following a successful first flight in January, Blue Origin successfully launched its heavy-lift New Glenn…
- CommercialISSScienceSNC/Dream ChaserUncrewed
Dream Chaser proceeding, hits milestones despite uncertain future
Dream Chaser, the vehicle that has been likened to a miniature version of NASA’s space…
Through international collaboration, a team of astronomers has confirmed two exoplanets and found hints of…
Arianespace, Europe’s long-standing primary launch provider, flew the Sentinel-1D Earth observation satellite aboard the third…
Located around Saturn is the icy moon Enceladus — one of the most interesting and…
Earlier this year, the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile officially began scientific operations,…
With help from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in low-Earth orbit, scientists recently observed a Pluto-like…
NASA and SpaceX successfully launched the agency’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) from Florida…
Using the joint Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), European Space Agency (ESA), and NASA X-Ray…
Using data from NASA’s now-retired Dawn spacecraft, scientists have found that Ceres, a dwarf planet…
While Earth and Mars are known for their intense surface quakes, other terrestrial bodies in…
Travelling through the asteroid belt, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft has taken its first…
- OtherScience
Webb reveals structures in planetary nebula, sheds new light on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
The joint NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope recently observed the remnants…
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite…
- InternationalOtherRussianScience
Roscosmos Ionosfera science mission launches atop Soyuz from Vostochny Cosmodrome
A Soyuz 2.1b rocket launched from Site 1S at Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia, carrying two…
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California, carrying…
- EuropeanInternationalOtherScience
CHEOPS discovers exoplanet triggering explosive flares on host star
Using the European Space Agency’s Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS) telescope, a team of astronomers has…
On Dec. 24, 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe traveled closer to the Sun than any…
On Oct. 7, 2014, and Nov. 2, 2016, the Japanese Himawari 8 and Himawari 9…
How space weather events impact launches, orbiting spacecraft, and our future in space
When Blue Origin scrubbed the launch of its NG-2 mission on its New Glenn rocket on Nov. 12, the culprit wasn’t Florida’s notoriously unpredictable thunderstorms or high winds — it was space weather. NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, the primary payload on NG-2, was eventually launched on Nov. 13 and is designed to study how solar storms stripped Mars of its atmosphere. However, the mission was grounded by the very phenomenon it was built to investigate.
The decision to scrub the second NG-2 launch attempt came after multiple coronal mass ejections barreled toward Earth earlier in the week, triggering severe G4 geomagnetic storms that painted auroras across skies as far south as Mexico and Florida. For mission planners, the spectacular light show represented a serious threat to the two ESCAPADE spacecraft during the vulnerable launch and deployment phases of the mission.
