NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Consuming food aboard the International Space Station (ISS) can be a rather tricky task, but luckily, NASA can regularly send more food up. However, when future missions begin calling for astronauts to travel farther out into space, that won’t be an option. Enter the “Deep Space Food Challenge.”

After the SLS Core Stage hot fire test that aborted just over a minute into the test, it was uncertain what objectives were met and if they would need to do a second test fire. During the second press conference Tuesday afternoon, concerns arose about the Core Stage reaching its cryo-cycling limit before the launch but today NASA shares the Core Stage and Artemis 1 timeline may be in better shape than first thought.

NASA released a statement this week detailing information about some of the findings that contributed to the early shutdown of the Artemis 1 Core Stage during the Green Run Hot Fire test on Saturday. The test was originally supposed to last about 8 minutes, but ended up only lasting 67.2 seconds, far short of the minimum amount of time needed to certify the core.

NASA recently submitted a permit detailing facility construction and modification plans to support its next Mobile Launch Platform for Space Launch System, the agency’s nearly complete rocket to the Moon. We first have to go back to where SLS all started with the Constellation program to understand why NASA is building a new Mobile Launch Platform.

The current Mobile Launcher, ML-1, was initially built for the Constellation program between 2009 and 2010. When the Constellation program was canned in October 2010, NASA started reworking ML-1 to support their new program for the Space Launch System. With the increased complexity and weight of SLS, issues quickly began to arise.

NASA invited media to Kennedy Space Center to witness the progress being made with the stacking of the SLS Solid Rocket Motors and to see the Orion Crew Capsule as it is being prepared to be moved to one of the final processing facilities before being stacked later this year.

NASA is returning astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s, but first the space agency must develop a new rocket capable of reaching lunar orbit. Space Launch System is that rocket, and it’s been in development for several years.

Over the weekend, NASA’s Stennis Space Center in South Mississippi conducted a critical engine test on the core stage of Space Launch System and its four RS-25 engines. While these engines aren’t new — they actually date back to use on the space shuttle — but being configured on a rocket to the Moon is untested.

The epic engine test wasn’t a total success, however, as the vehicle detected an anomaly and stopped firing its engines well before the required test duration. The good news is NASA says both the rocket core stage and its engines remain in good shape.

Virgin Orbit attempted its second demonstration launch on Sunday after their first attempt failed shortly after the first stage ignition last year. This time around they didn’t just launch a mass simulator but actual payloads from NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program ElaNa 20 which contained several CubeSats from universities across the nation.

Signed on the 45th anniversary of the final crewed mission to the Moon, Space Policy Directive 1 directed NASA to begin a mission to send the next man and first woman to the Moon with a pathway to continue onto the crewed exploration of Mars. Since then, the Artemis program has expanded to include already existing programs as well as new commercialized contracts for new services.

How would history divert from reality if the United States had lost the Space Race to the Soviet Union in the 1960s? Ronald Moore’s “For All Mankind” on Apple TV+ explores an alternative timeline in which America is second to the Moon in season one of the sci-fi series.

“We’re concerned the Soviets might be trying to introduce a new weapon.” That’s how the alt history storyline picks up in the midst of a Cold War escalation during the 1980s in season two. Today we have the most detailed look at what unfolds next as NASA struggles with a takeover by the Department of Defense.

NASA released a new analysis today that concludes that 2020 tied for the warmest year on record with 2016, continuing our planet’s trend of slowly but surely getting warmer over the past seven years.

NASA’s InSight lander was launched back in 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V rocket and was the first interplanetary mission from California. The lander made it safely to the surface of Mars on November 26, carrying new experiments to learn more about Mars subsurface science.

The two big experiments that took the ride to the Red Planet were a seismometer and “self-hammering nail” to study the thermal properties below the surface of Mars nicknamed “the mole”. The mole ran into problems almost right away after it was lifted off the top of the lander and placed on the ground in late 2019.

Meyya Meyyappan, a 66-year-old senior NASA scientist in California, has just pleaded guilty before a US District Judge in Manhattan. The charges brought forth include making false statements to the FBI, NASA, and the USAO about his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Program.

This Saturday NASA and their contractors are planning on conducting the final Green Run test for NASA’s Artemis-1 core stage of the Space Launch System rocket. This will be the only time the stage will be fired for a full 8 minutes before its flight.

NASA has had the goal over the years to grow the commercial space market by moving design, development, and operations of spacecraft over to commercial partners rather than the government agency. Instead of NASA being the only place for researchers to go for getting payloads to space, NASA has become more of a customer of commercial spacecraft providers

After a year of a long testing campaign, NASA and Boeing at Stennis Space Center are ready to conduct the final test for the Space Launch System core stage before it is handed over to the launch team at Kennedy Space Center.

After being pushed back on Monday due to bad weather in its primary Atlantic Ocean landing zone, SpaceX’s CRS-21 Dragon cargo capsule successfully undocked from the International Space Station this morning. This follows a change to its primary splashdown point to the other side of Florida.

NASA has selected four astrophysics mission concepts that will be in the running to join its Pioneers program. These concepts will undergo a full concept study by NASA, and if everything checks out, they will formally become part of the program.

2020 ended on a low note for the scientific community as the Arecibo Observatory collapsed in early December. However, this event has reinvigorated the discussion around NASA’s proposed Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT). Some scientists have even suggested that an LCRT on the Moon’s far side could act as a better replacement for Arecibo.

Joe Biden will become the next President of the United States on January 20, and the space community has questions. What does the new administration have planned for NASA’s Artemis program, how will the new commander-in-chief direct the U.S. Space Force, and will the Trump-revived National Space Council continue?

Another question to ask is how will a President Biden approach revisiting government facilities named after those with whom we do not share values. Biden will preside over renaming 10 military bases named after Confederate generals. This change gained bipartisan in Congress at the end of last year. What did not gain bipartisan support in 2020 is support for renaming NASA’s Stennis Space Center.

Preparations for NASA’s Artemis program are in full swing as the first mission, Artemis I, is set to launch later this year. However, one crucial part of the program that still requires a solution is navigation architecture. With extended stays on the moon, humans and autonomous robots alike would benefit greatly from having a system similar to GPS available.