Aboard

On the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, NASA announced on Wednesday that it's shooting for a late August launch of its giant, new moon rocket.NASA will attempt the more than month-long lunar test flight with three mannequins, but no astronauts, as early as August 29. There are also two launch dates in early September, before NASA would have to stand down for two weeks.NASA's Jim Free noted the test flight begins "our Artemis program to go back to the moon.” The space agency's new lunar program is named…

The first space tourism mission by Elon Musk's SpaceX blasted off from Florida on Wednesday and the four crew members -- a billionaire and three other Americans -- have already seen more than 25 sunsets and sunrises.SpaceX has released few details about their adventure since they reached an orbit which is more distant than that of the International Space Station.Here's what we know about their life on board:Nine square meters The four space tourists are aboard the SpaceX crew capsule called Dragon.It is 8.1 meters (26.7…

William Shatner, 90, is reportedly going to become the oldest person to fly into space on board Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket. Shatner, who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk in the popular Star Trek franchise, is set to be part of the second crew to fly into space in the New Shepard capsule in July. Bezos and his team took the inaugural Blue Origin space flight and spent a few minutes in zero gravity. The Amazon founder is in a race with other private players like Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic to tap the evolving…

NASA is developing an augmented reality (AR) application for astronauts to enable them to inspect and maintain equipment on the International Space Station (ISS) without needing assistance from ground control. This, the agency hopes, will reduce the impact of communication delays between the ISS crew and NASA mission control in Houston, Texas, US. While the communication delay is unnoticeable mostly, NASA says this project will increase the autonomy of astronauts in making quick and informed decisions. This project will…

The European Space Agency (ESA), an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states, has shared on Instagram a small video clip of an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) running on a treadmill. Yes, you read that right. You must be wondering how an astronaut stayed stable in microgravity. Well, there's always a way.In the clip, the astronaut, Thomas Pesquet, had bungee cords attached to him and they ensured he didn't fly away from the treadmill. What's also remarkable is that the astronaut appears to…

A SpaceX resupply spacecraft has left for the International Space Station (ISS) carrying science experiments that will help carry out climate science research in space. Launched on the Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Cargo Dragon spacecraft is transporting 5,800 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and other cargo. This is SpaceX's 25th commercial resupply services mission to the ISS for NASA.The SpaceX spacecraft is loaded with a number of experiments with one being the Earth…

US businessman Glen de Vries, who flew into space with "Star Trek" actor William Shatner on last month's Blue Origin flight, has died in a plane crash, police said Friday.The small aircraft came down in Hampton Township, New Jersey, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) west of New York City, shortly before 3:00pm (19:00 GMT) on Thursday, a spokesman for New Jersey state police told AFP."There are two confirmed fatalities," the spokesman said, naming de Vries, 49, and 54-year-old Thomas Fischer."The FAA (Federal Aviation…

NASA is sending Snoopy, the iconic and adorable character from Peanuts, to the Moon aboard its first Artemis mission early next year. Snoopy became the world's first beagle to land on the lunar surface in the Peanuts comic strips by the late Charles M. Schulz in 1969. More than 60 years later, it is again going extraterrestrial — only this time it will be for real. A stuffed Snoopy will serve as a zero gravity indicator on the Orion spacecraft as it flies around the Moon. The Artemis I is an uncrewed mission to test…

NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million (roughly Rs. 2,460 crore) project with echoes of the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon.If all goes well, the boxy, 1,200-pound (540kg) craft will slam head-on into Dimorphos, an…

NASA has a number of powerful telescopes in orbit that assist scientists in better understanding the chaotic environments far away from the Earth. On Thursday, the space agency launched another telescope. Named the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, the telescope will aid scientists in better understanding what's inside a black hole and how bright pulsars, which are flipping stars that generate beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles, may get. The IXPE is designed to examine some of the…