Spaceflight Insider

    The Range

  • Voyager 2 will be on its own while DSN antenna is upgraded

    March 23rd
    The only radio telescope capable of communicating with NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft will undergo nearly 11 months of upgrades to its 230-foot- (70-meter-) wide antenna, during which it will be unable to transmit commands to the 42-year-old spacecraft, which is now traveling in interstellar space.

  • Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden passes away

    March 19th
    Alfred M. Worden, a former astronaut who served as the command module pilot of NASA’s Apollo 15 Moon mission, died in his sleep on Wednesday, March 18, at a Sugar Land, Texas, assisted living center, at the age of 88.

  • Sun is rising on launch day for SpaceX Starlink-5 mission

    March 15th
    It’s launch day! With under an hour to go before the scheduled liftoff of SpaceX’s sixth batch of 60 Starlink satellites, SpaceFlight Insider correspondent Theresa Cross is stationed along the river’s edge at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s (KSCVC) Saturn V viewing site.

  • New Horizons parallax project seeks public participation

    February 21st
    NASA’s New Horizons mission is seeking public participation in a project aimed at imaging the two closest stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, from Earth on April 22 and 23, the same day the spacecraft will photograph them from almost five billion miles (eight billion km) away.

  • Pluto’s heart feature controls its winds

    February 20th
    Pluto’s iconic heart feature, named Tombaugh Regio, functions as a “beating heart” that controls the small planet’s winds and might even play a role in shaping its surface features.

  • Arrokoth data sheds light on planet formation

    February 19th
    Data returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft taken during its January 2019 flyby of Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth, also known as 2014 MU 69, located four billion miles from Earth, supports the theory that planet formation in the solar system occurred in a gentle rather than violent process.

  • ULA successfully launches Solar Probe aboard Atlas V

    February 10th
    CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launched a NASA probe its way to our Sun. At 11:03 p.m. EDT, February 9, the rocket left Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) located at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

  • Pluto’s hazy atmosphere is similar to that of Titan

    February 2nd
    Pluto is often compared to Neptune's largest moon Triton, but its hazy atmosphere is actually more akin to that of Saturn's largest moon Titan, which is sometimes viewed as an analog of early Earth.

  • NASA broadcast celebrates Spitzer telescope’s accomplishments

    January 24th
    In a live broadcast on Wednesday, January 22, NASA celebrated 16 years of incredible accomplishments by the Spitzer Space Telescope, one of its four "Great Observatories" in space.

  • Spitzer telescope to be decommissioned after 16 years

    January 20th
    NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has studied the universe in infrared light since its launch in August of 2003, will be decommissioned on Thursday, January 30, 2020.

  • Gallery: SpaceX’s Dragon clears safety check paving way for crewed missions

    January 19th

  • No in-flight abort for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft today

    January 18th
    SpaceX has been forced to stand down from today's attempt to test out a critical element of the company's crew-rated spacecraft.

  • Boeing releases video from recent OFT mission

    January 16th
    Boeing has released video from its failed attempt to send its "Starliner" spacecraft to the International Space Station.

  • Processing of Starlink 2 booster underway, following return to Port Canaveral

    January 11th
    SpaceX's B1049.4 returned to Port Canaveral January 9, 2020 after the completion of its fourth flown mission delivering the third set of Starlink satellites into low-Earth-orbit (LEO). This is Spacex’s first launch supported by the newly-created U.S. Space Force and its forty-eighth successful booster recovery.

  • CRS-19 Dragon wet and waiting for next mission

    January 7th
    After spending nearly a month berthed to the International Space Station, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule left the Station and splashed down marking the successful completion of its mission.

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