For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM TITUSVILLE, FL – Just past midnight, SpaceX lofted another 55 Starlink high speed broadband internet satellites to low Earth orbit while accomplishing the fastest turnaround between missions – five days and three hours – from the same pad! Namely complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and soaring away again on a southeasterly
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Precisely 50 years to the day when humans last landed on the Moon on Apollo 17, NASA’s next generation human rated lunar capsule Orion safely returned to Earth, Sunday, Dec. 11, capping a history making month long demonstration mission around the Moon and back with a successful ocean splashdown off the coast
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, FL – In the dead of the night Sunday, Dec. 11, SpaceX successfully launched a pair of science missions to the Moon placing the commercially built Japanese HAKUTO-R robotic lunar lander for iSpace and NASA’s Lunar Flashlight rideshare cubesat searching for lunar water ice into a lunar transfer orbit from Florida’s
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA’s Orion Artemis 1 spacecraft snapped a series of staggeringly beautiful selfie views with the cratered lunar surface and the crescent Earth rising against an eerie backdrop of the blackness of space as it conducted the critical return flyby powered (RPF) maneuver Monday, Dec. 5 – that irreversibly committed the capsule to
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA’s Orion Artemis 1 spacecraft captured stunning up close imagery of the tortured lunar surface terrain during the unpiloted vehicles 1st close flyby orbiting around the Moon’s far side on Flight Day 6 of the test flight mission on 21 Nov. 2022. I’ve created a trio of up close lunar mosaics from
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft has departed lunar orbit after successfully completing the critical distant retrograde orbit departure burn on Thursday afternoon, Dec. 1 – the first of two thruster firings that sets the spacecraft up for its final close lunar flyby and starts the return journey to Earth with a splashdown
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft reached the farthest distance from Earth it will travel during the groundbreaking Artemis 1 mission — while also reaching the halfway mark of the flight during Flight Day 13, on Monday, Nov. 28 of the 25.5 day long test flight. The spacecraft also captured stunning imagery of Earth and the
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL –NASA’s Orion crew capsule entered its a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) trajectory around the Moon after completing a critical thruster firing on Friday afternoon, Nov. 25, of the main engine required for lunar orbit insertion on Flight Day 10 of the 25.5-day long Artemis 1 unpiloted test flight mission. Orion’s Orbital Maneuvering
NASA’s Orion Completes Outbound Powered Lunar Flyby Firing with Luscious Lookbacks to Earth and Moon
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s new era of Artemis exploration continues gathering momentum as the unpiloted Orion crew capsule successfully completed its outbound powered flyby (OPF) engine burn Monday morning, Nov. 21 and made its closest flyby of the Moon – keeping the human space vehicle and Artemis 1 mission precisely on track for targeting
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA is targeting Monday Nov. 14 as the date for the next launch attempt of the Artemis I mission with a nighttime liftoff of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the Moon and back. The just past midnight nighttime launch window for