News Archive / Missions

• New Horizons parallax project seeks public participation

  Laurel KornfeldFebruary 21st, 2020

  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.

• Arrokoth data sheds light on planet formation

  Laurel KornfeldFebruary 19th, 2020

  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.

• Pluto’s heart feature controls its winds

  Laurel KornfeldFebruary 18th, 2020

  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.

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

  Laurel KornfeldFebruary 2nd, 2020

  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

  Laurel KornfeldJanuary 24th, 2020

  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

  Laurel KornfeldJanuary 20th, 2020

  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.

• SpaceX, NASA monitoring weather ahead of in-flight abort test.

  Sean CostelloJanuary 19th, 2020

  CAPE CANAVERAL. Fla. — As the sun rises and the shorelines of the Space Coast communities fill with eager spectators, SpaceX and NASA engineers have their attention focused on the early Sunday morning weather systems.

• CRS-19 Dragon wet and waiting for next mission

  Cullen DesforgesJanuary 7th, 2020

  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.

• OFT: What went wrong?

  Jim SiegelDecember 21st, 2019

  NASA and Boeing don't seem to know what exactly prevented the OFT Starliner from completing its primary mission objective.

• Boeing’s Starliner capsule begins much-delayed first flight: UPDATE

  Cullen DesforgesDecember 20th, 2019

  CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – After almost a year of continued delays, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has finally launched. It is the culmination of years of development, but there’s still a ways to go before astronauts will be soaring aloft in the vehicle.

• Launch of JCSAT-18 / Kacific-1 furthers SpaceX’s reusability program

  SpaceFlight InsiderDecember 18th, 2019

  SpaceX's domination of the launch services market continues with Monday's launch of a Boeing-built satellite for SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. and Kacific Broadband Satellites.

• New Horizons science instrument detects slowing of solar wind

  Laurel KornfeldDecember 12th, 2019

  NASA's New Horizons mission has caught 'wind' of the ragged edges of our Solar System.

• NASA completes SLS core stage in preparation for Artemis 1 mission

  Curt GodwinDecember 10th, 2019

  Boeing completes milestone in 15-year-long effort to reignite crewed deep space missions.

• This Bud’s for you! SpaceX sends ‘King of Beers’ to orbit on CRS-19

  Jim SiegelDecember 5th, 2019

  Propellant? Check. Science experiments? Check. Hardware? Check. Budweiser? Checkity-check!

• Two centaur missions proposed to NASA’s Discovery program

  Laurel KornfeldNovember 22nd, 2019

  NASA is considering two Discovery Program missions that would head to the deepest regions of our solar system to study far flung bodies that reside there.

• Virgin Galactic begins Astronaut Readiness Program

  Cullen DesforgesNovember 21st, 2019

  The commercial space industry is one step closer toward achieving its goal of sending paying customers to suborbit.

• New Horizons’ second target is formally named Arrokoth

  Laurel KornfeldNovember 15th, 2019

  The double-lobed Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) located one billion miles beyond Pluto and visited by the New Horizons spacecraft on January 1, 2019, has been officially named Arrokoth, which means sky in the Native American Powhatan/Algonquian language.

• Boeing completes test of hyper-critical pad abort system

  Jim SiegelNovember 4th, 2019

  With SpaceX steamrolling ahead toward achieving the goal of sending U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, Boeing took a step of its own today toward accomplishing the same feat.

• NASA funds study of possible Pluto orbiter

  Laurel KornfeldNovember 4th, 2019

  There's no doubt that NASA's New Horizons mission crushed it. This has emboldened the space agency to take their exploration of the far reaches of our solar system to the next level.

• Critical tests for Boeing and SpaceX’s crewed efforts slated for next week

  Jason RhianNovember 1st, 2019

  If things go according to plan next week, NASA, Boeing and SpaceX will check key systems that are required to keep astronauts safe on their way to orbit. If these last checks can be completed, the agency could finally regain a capability it lost almost a decade ago.