News Archive / Author: Larry Klaes
Larry Klaes is an author and freelance journalist specializing in news and educational work on the sciences. Klae's past endeavors include editor of SETIQuest magazine and President of the Boston chapter of the National Space Society (NSS). Klaes joined SpaceFlight Insider in 2016.
Articles By Larry Klaes
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Eyes on: Watching NASA Work on the JWST with ‘Webb-cam’
June 5th, 2017NASA has continued its very popular "Webb-cam" monitoring of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with a special Webb camera installed in NASA's Johnson Space Center clean room in front of the massive thermal vacuum testing chamber known as Chamber A.
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BEAM returning ‘extremely valuable’ data about expandable habitats
November 29th, 2016Having been attached to the ISS for six months, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, better known as BEAM, is already providing data that could inform the design of future human-rated expandable space habitats. The module was launched April 8 by SpaceX's CRS-8 Dragon spacecraft and was attached to the station's Tranquility module and expanded in May.
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Shotwell: ‘We did something to that rocket, and we’re going to find it and we’re going to fix it.’
October 8th, 2016SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell addressed the Asia-Pacific Satellite Communications Council (APSCC) 2016 conference held in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Oct. 5, 2016, answering questions about the company's status – including the Amos-6 satellite disaster.
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Virgin Galactic’s Unity makes successful test run
September 9th, 2016Virgin Galactic, the commercial space wing of Virgin Group, Ltd., has begun its recovery from a fatal flight accident, nearly two years ago, with the successful first test flight of its newest SpaceShipTwo class spaceplane, the Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Unity, on Thursday, Sept. 8, above the Mojave Desert in California.
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Our SpaceFlight Heritage: Project Orion, a nuclear bomb and rocket – all in one
August 31st, 2016Project Orion was a proposal for a spacecraft to be directly propelled by a series of explosions from nuclear bombs ejected and detonated behind the vessel – i.e., nuclear pulse propulsion.
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Strange signal detected by Russian radio telescope
August 31st, 2016On Aug. 27, it was reported a strange signal appeared to have emanated from the vicinity of a rather Sun-like star almost 95 light-years away. The star is known as HD 164595 (also HIP 88194). The news was broken by Paul Gilster on the Centauri Dreams blog, the official forum of the Tau Zero Foundation (TZF), which is dedicated to the reporting, study, and promotion of interstellar flight and exploration.
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NASA completes important milestone with Asteroid Redirect Mission
August 20th, 2016One of the keys to the successful permanent colonization of the Solar System are those celestial objects called variously asteroids, planetoids, minor planets, meteoroids, Near Earth Objects (NEOs), and even “vermin” by astronomers in the past frustrated by their unwanted light streaks appearing in their astronomical photographs.
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Our Spaceflight Heritage: The day the Sun almost caused World War III
August 14th, 2016In the famous Drake Equation, a mathematical formula designed to determine the number of technological civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy, the factor L denotes the lifetime that a technological civilization will be sending signals into space – until its own self-destruction.
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First Iridium NEXT satellites shipped to Vandenberg
August 5th, 2016On Tuesday, August 2, a specially designed semi-trailer truck safely delivered the first two spacecraft of the next generation of Iridium global mobile telecommunications satellites to SpaceX’s clean room at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
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Cost details revealed for SpaceX’s Red Dragon mission
July 29th, 2016In a July 2016 NASA Advisory Council (NAC) meeting, it was revealed how much SpaceX's Red Dragon mission would cost the agency, which has an unfunded Space Act Agreement with the NewSpace firm. According to SpaceNews, in a 10 to 1 ratio, with SpaceX spending the bulk, the total cost is expected to be on the order of $320 million.
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Mars Curiosity rover enters, leaves safe mode
July 8th, 2016Just two days before the start of the Fourth of July holiday, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity went into an unexpected safe mode, a state that it had not entered since 2013. According to NASA, the nuclear-powered rover has since resumed communications with Earth and engineers are working to restore Curiosity to its full working capacity.
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BEAM passes initial inspection; interior photos released
June 17th, 2016The International Space Station’s (ISS) first expandable addition, known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), passed its initial inspection by two of the station’s residents. Additionally, NASA recently released high-resolution photos of the modules interior and exterior.
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ULA releases OA-6 launch anomaly report, clears Atlas V for next flight
June 17th, 2016When ULA's Atlas V rocket sent the OA-6 Cygnus cargo vessel, the S.S. Rick Husband, to the International Space Station (ISS) on March 22, 2016, mission controllers detected an anomaly as the rocket headed into low-Earth orbit with its several tons of important supplies and equipment for the astronauts aboard the station.
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Next Cygnus cargo ship dedicated to astronaut Alan Poindexter
June 8th, 2016Orbital ATK, builder of the Cygnus cargo vessels, has a tradition of naming the craft for NASA astronauts who have passed away. The chosen space explorers are ones who made contributions either to Orbital ATK’s goals or were involved in the construction of the ISS.
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SpaceX hangar hosts four recovered Falcon 9 boosters
June 8th, 2016KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — A recent SpaceX photo showed four of the company's recovered Falcon 9 first stage cores inside the company's Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at KSC's Launch Complex 39A. The image comes at a time when representatives with SpaceX have revealed when they might attempt to re-fly one of the stages.
