Space Explored

NASA announced contract awards to five companies for further development of lunar lander concepts for its Artemis Program on Tuesday.

Tonight SpaceX plans to launch its first privately crewed mission to space. Here is how to watch the all-civilian crew of Inspiration4 launch from historic LC-39A on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

The Perseverance Rover has collected two samples so far on the Mars, and NASA says they reveal the presence of both ancient water and salt in Jezero Crater

The name of ‘Unistellar’ spread across the web when they launched their eVscope on Kickstarter in 2017. They released their second product the eVscope Equinox earlier this year, and now, they have announced the successor to their original telescope, the eVscope 2.

On Monday, SpaceX plans to launch their first operational batch of Starlink satellites from their launch complex out of Vandenberg Space Force Base. While the official name of this mission is Starlink 2-1 the launch will not carry the 2.0 variants we’ve been waiting for. Instead, these will be 1.5 version satellites and the 2 refers to the “group 2” of Starlink satellites.

This will be the first SpaceX launch from the west coast since Sentinel 6 in November 2020. This will also be the first full batch of Starlink satellites to launch into a polar orbit. Starlink 2-1 will host the first use of the droneship Of Course I Still Love you on the west coast.

Date: Monday, September 13th, 11:55 p.m. EDT

In a brief tweet yesterday, Steve Wozniak announced he is co-founding a new private space company.

Inspiration4 has been pushing towards its $200 million fundraising goal for St. Jude. A part of the cause is an NFT auction, which today announced what will be up to buy, including pieces from Inspiration4 pilot Dr. Sian Proctor.

This week, the target launch date for the James Webb Space telescope was announced, SpaceX released a new render of Starship Super Heavy, and Inspiration4 works toward launch.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) sent back nearly 300 new photos of the Red Planet which were released September 1st.

Inspiration4 announced today that a number of objects set to fly on the first all-civilian mission to space will be auctioned in support of St. Jude.

The Perseverance rover obtained its first rock sample on Mars. NASA plans to return this rock-core, along with future samples back to Earth on future Mars missions.

SpaceX has won a contract to launch Al Yah Satellite (Yahsat) Communications Company’s latest communication satellite.

Late last month Nanoracks announced the launch of a new company, StarLab Oasis. The company is aimed at addressing desertification, climate change, water scarcity, and food security.

The California-based smallsat launcher, Rocket Lab, announced Wednesday that they will be launching 5 missions for Internet-of-Things (IoT) connectivity provider Kinéis. This will make Rocket Lab the exclusive launcher of Kinéis’

Last Friday, cargo ship MN Toucan arrived in French Guiana carrying the upper stage and fairing of the Ariane 5 rocket that will launch the James Webb Space Telescope later this year.

SpaceX’s latest render of their Starship vehicle reflects many of the changes Elon has recently been talking about.

A press release from China’s National Space Science Center provided a first look at a prototype for their new Martian Helicopter.

Monday morning Netflix released the first two episodes of their Inspiration4 documentary series. The series will cover the crew’s journey to and from space onboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. This week we got to see the first part of their journey, the selection of the Inspiration4 crew.