Zac Hall

Sending the first woman and next man to the Moon isn’t the only lunar goal NASA has for 2024. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced today that the space agency is seeking a commercial company capable of collecting moon rocks for NASA to purchase.

The interesting twist is that the company or companies awarded contracts won’t be required to bring the Moon rocks back to Earth. The objective is simply to demonstrate commerce on the Moon as a concept toward building a sustainable presence on the lunar surface and beyond.

ULA Delta IV Heavy from Launch Complex 34 (Photo credit: Seth Kurkowski for Space Explored)

Want to see a really massive rocket blast off to space in the middle of the night? United Launch Alliance is sending its massive Delta IV Heavy rocket to orbit overnight to deploy a classified payload from the National Reconnaissance Office Laboratory. Liftoff is set for 2:05 a.m. ET/11:05 p.m. PT overnight at the earliest.

California-based launch company Rocket Lab experienced an unexpected loss of vehicle in space after a successful liftoff from New Zealand in July. The development halted Rocket Lab’s increasingly steady cadence of sending customer payloads to space, but a quick discovery of the issue at fault minimized the launch provider’s time grounded.

Later this week, Rocket Lab will attempt its 14th Electron rocket mission from Launch Complex 1 at the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The mission called ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Optical!’ will deploy a satellite called Sequoia for Capella Space.

NASA plans to send the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024, and the Artemis mission to do that will include a commercially developed lunar human landing system. In April, the agency awarded initial funding to three human landing system proposals that will compete to be selected for the mission.

SpaceX, Dynetics, and The National Team (Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper) were each awarded initial funding. Today, The National Team delivered on a major milestone in the process.

An engineering mockup of the Blue Origin-led human landing system has been delivered to the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Kurt Hughes wanted to be an astronaut, but poor vision prevented the boatbuilder from living that dream. While it may not be the Moon, Hughes applied his boatbuilding skills to creating his own lunar lander-style home that’s actually inhabitable.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s HTV-9 spacecraft will depart from the International Space Station for one last time today before the next generation of transfer cargo vehicles is readied in two years.

JAXA’s Kounotori spacecraft launched three months ago from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan to deliver four tons of supplies, including new space station lithium-ion batteries.

August 18, 2020: SpaceX has raised $1,901,446,920, according to a SpaceX SEC filing. The $1.9 billion in new capital is SpaceX’s largest fundraising round to date. Story from July 23 below.

Elon Musk and SpaceX plan to raise additional capital for the private space exploration company at its highest valuation yet. Musk is reportedly in talks to raise around $1 billion in funding at $270 a share for SpaceX. The newest valuation puts SpaceX’s worth at $44 billion, a massive climb from $36 billion five months ago.

SpaceX is attempting to set a new reusability record for its Falcon 9 rocket boosters today with its Starlink 10 mission. The Falcon 9 rocket first stage is designed to land after giving the second stage and payload a boost into space. Reusing first stage boosters helps reduce the cost of spaceflight.

If today’s launch is successful, SpaceX will achieve a new record for itself of reusing a booster for a total of six times. The first stage booster on today’s Falcon 9 rocket has been flown five times prior to today’s mission, with the earliest in September 2018.

Space Time is a new podcast from Space Explored, part of the 9to5Mac Network.

In this episode of Space Time, Daryl Sausse and Seth Kurkowski share their experience covering their first NASA mission for Space Explored during Mars 2020 launch week.

Subscribe to receive new episodes every Thursday: 🟣 Apple Podcasts 🟠 Overcast 🟢 Spotify 🔴 YouTube

In a surprise decision made in May, NASA abruptly replaced its associate administrator in charge of human spaceflight eight days before flying astronauts with a commercial partner for the first time in history. While NASA didn’t cite a specific reason for Doug Loverro’s resignation, the outgoing human spaceflight lead suggested a single mistake was made:

The risks we take, whether technical, political, or persona, all have potential consequences if we judge them incorrectly. I took such a risk earlier in the year because I judged it necessary to fulfill our mission. Now, over the balance of time, it is clear that I made a mistake in that choice for which I alone must bear consequences. 

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that federal prosecutors are investigating the incident:

NASA’s Perseverance lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on July 30. The new Mars rover traveled atop a United Launch Alliance-operated Atlas V rocket. The Countdown to Mars is just beginning, however. The rover’s months-long journey to Mars will continue through February 2021, then the next decade of Martian science and astrobiological discovery can commence. In this Dispatches from NASA installment, Space Explored captures the week that the Mars 2020 mission took flight in photos, video, and more.

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was still undergoing repairs from damage by Hurricane Maria three years ago when an auxiliary cable broke and took the telescope offline this week.

The observatory is managed by the University of Central Florida in partnership with Universidad Ana G. Méndez and Yang Enterprises Inc. NASA also relies on the telescope to support the Planetary Radar Project.

The broken cable slashed through the 1,000-foot-wide reflector dish this week, creating 100 feet of damage throughout the telescope.

Ask any astronaut who has spent time aboard the International Space Station about the logistics of using the restroom in space, and you’ll likely hear the phrase “yesterday’s coffee is today’s coffee.” That’s a polite way of hinting at the water filtration system that recycles human waste for re-use as water. Lovely, right?

Now set your sights on the Moon and Mars, two destinations that are much further from the last restroom on Earth than the ISS, and the need to do something useful with all that waste is even more important.

NASA will soon return astronauts to the Moon using an all-new vehicle called Space Launch System. Using a rocket that has never flown before requires lots of testing, as you can imagine, and many of those tests are quite dramatic — even if NASA is just testing some new soap.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is more than just America’s space agency that runs the U.S. space program. NASA is a global symbol for space exploration, aeronautical and space research, and the universal effort to advance humankind.

Whether it’s the “meatball” insignia or the “worm” logotype, NASA symbolism including rocketry is a celebration of all things space for fans of all ages and expertise.

You don’t have to track down a gift shop in a NASA space center to find the best space swag to celebrate your inner astronaut. Affordable fashion chains regularly put together stellar collections of the coolest NASA merchandise, including these highlights:

Virgin Galactic published its Q2 2020 financial results hours after revealing a design concept and propulsion partnership for a future Mach 3 high-speed aircraft. During the second quarter of this year, the publicly traded company (SPCE) reported a net loss of $63 million compared to a $60 million net loss during the previous quarter.

The company says its cash position continues to be strong, however, with $360 million in cash and cash equivalents going into the end of the second quarter. Going forward, Virgin Galactic wants to raise somewhere in the ballpark of $460 million from a proposed public offering of over 20 million shares of common stock. Virgin Galactic also disclosed anticipated spaceflight plans for 2020 and early 2021 while giving a brief update on its commercial service status.

Law breaking boats weren’t the only surprises SpaceX experienced during an otherwise smooth NASA astronaut splashdown over the weekend. An issue involving a custom SpaceX app on the iPad also made a cameo appearance during the crewed return trip from the International Space Station to Earth.

NASA is planning to embark a spacecraft on a 12-year journey starting next year on a first-of-its-kind mission called Lucy. The Lucy spacecraft will flyby and study distant asteroids in our Solar System as part of a mission to learn more about the origins of our planet and species.

The space agency shared a status update on the upcoming Lucy mission today as the mission team passed a major milestone that puts the launch on schedule for a launch in October 2021.