NASA seeks Jupiter’s secrets with historic spacecraft flyover

Every planet in our solar system is famous for something. Saturn has its rings, Mars has its soil, Uranus that unfortunate name, and Jupiter has the Great Red Spot: a titanic storm that has been spinning for over 350 years. And though we’ve peered at the distant gas giants’ iconic feature since the 1830s, we […]

SpaceX set to join rare company by re-flying an orbital spacecraft

Enlarge / With the static fire test of its Falcon 9 rocket complete, SpaceX is targeting June 1 for its next launch from Pad 39A. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX took a big step toward a fully reusable launch system earlier this year by re-flying a used Falcon 9 booster, and it is making progress toward eventually […]

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is about to plunge between Saturn and its rings — before spiraling into the planet

For the last 13 years, a NASA spacecraft the size of a school bus has been whirling around Saturn, collecting data and snapping mesmerizing images of the ringed planet and its icy moons. That vehicle is Cassini, and its exploration of Saturn has led to some of the biggest discoveries ever made about the worlds […]

Jeff Bezos Declares No Shitting in His Sexy Spacecraft

Photo: Getty Jeff Bezos has many hobbies: he enjoys doing an Amazon, reading a Washington Post, and occasionally, dabbling in a space thing at Blue Origin. Lately, he’s been all about the latter, focusing much of his attention on one-upping Elon Musk promoting his aerospace company’s space tourism vehicle, New Shepard, which will carry tourists into […]

NASA prepares the Cassini spacecraft for its daring final Saturn mission

It’s been nearly two decades since the Cassini-Hyugens spacecraft launched from Earth toward Saturn, entering the ringed planet’s orbit on July 1, 2004. The Huygens lander separated on Christmas Day to dive into Saturn’s atmosphere, leaving Cassini to study the Saturn system alone. But now Cassini is running out of fuel and NASA is preparing […]

NASA Just Found a Lost Spacecraft Orbiting the Moon

Image: NASA Much like George Clooney in Gravity, sometimes, spacecrafts meet unfortunate fates—they get lost in space, and are almost always victims of the final frontier. But over the last few years, NASA has been having some real success locating wayward spacecrafts, including its STEREO-B solar observer. The agency has now done it again, locating […]