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Tag: spacecraft

  • NASA moves its Artemis II moon rocket off launch pad for more repairs

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA moved its grounded Artemis moon rocket from the launch pad back to its hangar Wednesday for more repairs.

    The slow-motion trek at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center was expected to take all day. The 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket had spent a month at the pad ready for potential liftoff, but encountered a series of problems serious enough to require a return to the Vehicle Assembly Building, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) away.

    Managers ordered the rollback over the weekend after the rocket’s helium pressurization system malfunctioned. Already delayed a month by hydrogen fuel leaks, the launch team had been targeting March for astronauts’ first trip to the moon in decades. But now the Artemis II lunar fly-around by a U.S.-Canadian crew is off until at least April.

    All four astronauts were at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night for President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address as invited guests, since the flight delay means they no longer need to quarantine.

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  • NASA will return its moon rocket to the hangar for more repairs before astronauts strap in

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Grounded until at least April, NASA’s giant moon rocket is headed back to the hangar this week for more repairs before astronauts climb aboard.

    The space agency said Sunday it’s targeting Tuesday for the slow, four-mile (6.4-kilometer) trek across Kennedy Space Center, weather permitting.

    NASA had barely finished a repeat fueling test Thursday, to ensure dangerous hydrogen fuel leaks were plugged, when another problem cropped up.

    This time, the rocket’s helium system malfunctioned, further delaying astronauts’ first trip to the moon in more than half a century.

    Engineers had just tamed the hydrogen leaks and settled on a March 6 launch date — already a month late — when the helium issue arose. The helium flow to the rocket’s upper stage was disrupted; helium is needed to purge the engines and pressurize the fuel tanks.

    “Returning to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy is required to determine the cause of the issue and fix it,” NASA said in a statement.

    NASA said the quick rollback preps preserve an April launch attempt, but stressed that will depend on how the repairs go. The space agency has only a handful of days any given month to launch the crew of four around the moon and back.

    The three Americans and one Canadian assigned to the Artemis II mission remain on standby in Houston. They will become the first people to fly to the moon since NASA’s Apollo program that sent 24 astronauts there from 1968 through 1972.

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  • NASA moon rocket hit by new problem expected to bump astronauts’ lunar trip into April

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s new moon rocket suffered another setback Saturday, almost certain to bump astronauts’ first lunar trip in decades into spring.

    The space agency revealed the latest problem just one day after targeting March 6 for the Artemis II mission, humanity’s first flight to the moon in more than half a century. Overnight, the flow of helium to the rocket’s upper stage was interrupted, officials said. Solid helium flow is essential for purging the engines and pressurizing the fuel tanks.

    This helium issue has nothing to do with the hydrogen fuel leaks that marred a countdown dress rehearsal of the Space Launch System rocket earlier this month and forced a repeat test.

    NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said a bad filter, valve or connection plate could be to blame for the stalled helium flow. Regardless of the cause, he noted, the only way to access the area and fix the problem is in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center.

    “We will begin preparations for rollback, and this will take the March launch window out of consideration,” Isaacman said via X. NASA’s next opportunities would be at the beginning or end of April.

    Earlier in the morning, NASA said it was preparing to return the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket to its hangar for repairs, while raising the possibility of the work being done at the pad.

    “I understand people are disappointed by this development,” Isaacman said. “That disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor.”

    Hydrogen fuel leaks had already delayed the Artemis II lunar fly-around by a month. A second fueling test on Thursday revealed hardly any leaks, giving managers the confidence to aim for a March liftoff. The four astronauts went into their two-week quarantine Friday night, mandatory for avoiding germs.

    The interrupted helium flow is confined to the SLS rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage. This upper stage is essential for placing the Orion crew capsule into the proper high-altitude orbit around Earth for checkout, following liftoff. After that, it’s supposed to separate from Orion and serve as a target for the astronauts inside the capsule, allowing them to practice docking techniques for future moon missions.

    During NASA’s Apollo program, 24 astronauts flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972. The new Artemis program has completed only one flight so far, a lunar-orbiting mission without a crew in 2022. That first test flight was also plagued by hydrogen fuel leaks before blasting off, as well as a helium issue similar to the one that arose Saturday. The first moon landing with a crew under Artemis is still at least a few years away.

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  • NASA targets March for Artemis moon mission after fueling test success

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA aims to send astronauts to the moon in March after acing the latest rocket fueling test.

    Administrator Jared Isaacman said Friday that launch teams made “major progress” between the first countdown rehearsal, which was disrupted by hydrogen leaks earlier this month, and the second test, which was completed without significant seepage Thursday night.

    The test was “a big step toward America’s return to the lunar environment,” Isaacman said on the social media platform X.

    NASA could launch four astronauts on the Artemis II lunar fly-around as soon as March 6 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. To keep their options open, the three Americans and one Canadian plan to go into the mandatory two-week health quarantine Friday night.

    The space agency has only five days in March to launch the crew aboard the Space Launch System rocket, before standing down until April. February’s opportunities evaporated after dangerous amounts of liquid hydrogen leaked during the first fueling demonstration.

    Technicians replaced two seals, leading to Thursday’s successful rerun. The countdown clocks went all the way down to the desired 29-second mark.

    The fixes worked, but there’s still pending work including conducting a flight readiness review, said NASA’s Lori Glaze.

    Commander Reid Wiseman and two of his crew monitored Thursday’s operation alongside launch controllers. The astronauts will be the first to fly to the moon since Apollo 17 closed out NASA’s first chapter in moon exploration in 1972.

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  • NASA conducts 2nd rocket fueling test that decides when astronauts head to moon

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA took another crack at fueling its giant moon rocket Thursday after leaks halted the initial dress rehearsal and delayed the first lunar trip by astronauts in more than half a century.

    For the second time this month, launch teams began pumping more than 700,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) of supercold fuel into the rocket atop its launch pad.

    It’s the most critical and challenging part of the two-day practice countdown. The outcome will determine whether a March launch is possible for the Artemis II moon mission with four astronauts.

    During the rehearsal two weeks ago, dangerous amounts of supercold liquid hydrogen escaped from the connections between the pad and the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket. Engineers replaced a pair of seals and a clogged filter in hopes of getting through the repeat test at Kennedy Space Center.

    NASA won’t set a launch date for the Artemis II mission until it passes the fueling demonstration. Like last time, the crew — three Americans and one Canadian — watched the test from afar.

    The soonest astronauts could soar is March 6. They will become the first people to fly to the moon — making a 10-day out-and-back trip with no stops — since Apollo 17 in 1972. They won’t orbit or land.

    NASA has been battling hydrogen fuel leaks ever since the space shuttle era, which provided many of the SLS engines. The first Artemis test flight without anyone on board was grounded for months by leaking hydrogen before finally blasting off in November 2022.

    Going years between flights exacerbates the problem, according to NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman, a tech entrepreneur who financed his own trips to orbit through SpaceX.

    Just two months into the job, Isaacman already is promising to redesign the fuel connections between the rocket and pad before the next Artemis III launch. Still a few years away, that mission will attempt to land two astronauts near the moon’s south pole.

    “We will not launch unless we are ready and the safety of our astronauts will remain the highest priority,” he said last week on X.

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  • NASA hopes fuel leaks are fixed as it launches another countdown test

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    This photo provided by NASA shows a full moon shining over NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Feb. 1, 2026. (Sam Lott/NASA via AP)

    The Associated Press

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  • Four new astronauts arrive at the ISS to replace NASA’s evacuated crew

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The International Space Station returned to full strength with Saturday’s arrival of four new astronauts to replace colleagues who bailed early because of health concerns.

    SpaceX delivered the U.S., French and Russian astronauts a day after launching them from Cape Canaveral.

    Last month’s medical evacuation was NASA’s first in 65 years of human spaceflight. One of four astronauts launched by SpaceX last summer suffered what officials described as a serious health issue, prompting their hasty return. That left only three crew members to keep the place running — one American and two Russians — prompting NASA to pause spacewalks and trim research.

    Moving in for eight to nine months are NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. Meir, a marine biologist, and Fedyaev, a former military pilot, have lived up there before. During her first station visit in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk.

    Adenot, a military helicopter pilot, is only the second French woman to fly in space. Hathaway is a captain in the U.S. Navy.

    NASA has refused to divulge the identity of the astronaut who fell ill in orbit on Jan. 7 or explain what happened, citing medical privacy. The ailing astronaut and three others returned to Earth more than a month sooner than planned. They spent their first night back on Earth at the hospital before returning to Houston.

    The space agency said it did not alter its preflight medical checks for their replacements.

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  • New astronauts launch to the International Space Station after medical evacuation

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A new crew rocketed toward the International Space Station on Friday to replace the astronauts who returned to Earth early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

    SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending the U.S., French and Russian astronauts on an expected eight- to nine-month mission stretching until fall. The four should arrive at the orbiting lab Saturday, filling the vacancies left by their evacuated colleagues last month and bringing the space station back to full staff.

    “It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit. “That was quite a ride,” replied the crew’s commander, Jessica Meir.

    NASA had to put spacewalks on hold and deferred other duties while awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They’ll join three other astronauts — one American and two Russians — who kept the space station running the past month.

    Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.

    It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA cut short a mission for medical reasons.

    With missions becoming longer, NASA is constantly looking at upgrades to the space station’s medical gear, said deputy program manager Dina Contella. “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.

    In preparation for moon and Mars trips where health care will be even more challenging, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood clot study.

    They also will demonstrate their moon-landing skills in a simulated test drawing extra attention because of the impending launch of four astronauts to the moon on Artemis II, humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century.

    Adenot is only the second French woman to launch to space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to Russia’s space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere cheered her on from the Florida launch site, wishing her “Bon vol,” French for “Have a good flight,” and “Ad astra,” Latin for “To the stars.”

    Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip. On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews.

    Meir wasn’t sure astronauts would return to the moon during her career. “Now we’re right here on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said ahead of liftoff. “The fact that they will be in space at the same time as us … it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”

    SpaceX launched the latest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing its neighboring Kennedy Space Center launch pad for the supersized Starships, which NASA needs to land astronauts on the moon.

    NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman said following Friday’s liftoff that testing continues at the Artemis pad, where the Space Launch System moon rocket awaits liftoff. A practice fueling last week unleashed hydrogen fuel leaks. Two seals have since been replaced and a mini fueling conducted.

    Isaacman stressed that no launch date will be set until additional fueling tests — potentially a series of them — are completed. The earliest that Artemis II could launch is March 3, he noted.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Elon Musk combines his rocket and AI businesses before an expected IPO this year

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    NEW YORK — Elon Musk is joining his space exploration and artificial intelligence ventures into a single company before what’s expected to be a massive initial public offering for the business later this year.

    His rocket venture, SpaceX, announced on Monday that it had bought xAI in an effort to help the world’s richest man dominate the rocket and artificial intelligence businesses. The deal will combine several of his offerings, including his AI chatbot Grok, his satellite communications company Starlink, and his social media company X.

    Musk has talked repeatedly about the need to speed development of technology that will allow data centers to operate in space. He believes that will help overcome the problem of huge costs in electricity and other resources in building and running AI systems on Earth.

    It’s a goal that Musk suggested in his announcement of the deal could become easier to reach with a combined company.

    “In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk wrote on SpaceX’s website Monday, then added in reference to solar power, “It’s always sunny in space!”

    Musk said in his announcement he estimates “that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.”

    SpaceX will be competing in that realm with Google, which is working on a research project called Project Suncatcher that would equip solar-powered satellites with AI computer chips, with a prototype that could launch as soon as next year.

    But Musk’s prediction of a near future of space-based AI supercomputers is not shared by many other companies building data centers, including Microsoft.

    “I’ll be surprised if people move from land to low-Earth orbit,” Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told The Associated Press last month, when asked about the alternatives to building data centers in the U.S. amid rising community opposition.

    Musk is already facing stiff competition in artificial intelligence, where he’s been scrambling to compete against rivals such as OpenAI, which is also working toward an IPO. Musk’s dislike of OpenAI, which he helped to found more than a decade ago, is part of what drove him to start xAI in 2023 and build the ChatGPT alternative he named Grok.

    Musk has equally ambitious plans for Tesla as he tries to pivot a company with shrinking car sales to focus more on self-driving taxis and humanoid robots, driven by artificial intelligence.

    Tesla recently announced a $2 billion investment in xAI.

    Musk has used his control over multiple companies to combine operations before. Tesla bought SolarCity, a decade ago. And he recently had xAI buy his social media platform X, formerly called Twitter.

    Chatter on Wall Street about the billionaire continuing to meld his many ventures together in a massive Musk Inc. has taken off in recent months, with some investors speculating that Tesla could combine with SpaceX, too.

    Forbes magazine puts Musk’s net worth at $768 billion. He also owns a brain implant company called Neuralink and a tunnel digging business named the Boring Company.

    Terms of the SpaceX purchase of xAI were not disclosed. Among outside investors in the companies is a fund in which President Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., is a partner. That firm, 1789 Capital, has made more than $1 billion worth of investments in various Musk companies in the past year, including SpaceX, xAI, and X, according to data provider Pitchbook, though it cashed out of some already.

    While pursuing space data centers, xAI is also moving rapidly to expand on Earth. Mississippi officials last month announced that the company is set to spend $20 billion to build a data center near the state’s border with Tennessee.

    The data center, called MACROHARDRR, a likely pun on Microsoft’s name, will be its third one in the greater Memphis area.

    Musk is also hoping the combined company can eventually help reach another goal he has long talked about — the need to colonize other planets in case there is a natural disaster or human-made disaster on Earth.

    When speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Musk mused about humanity being a “tiny candle in a vast darkness, a tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out.”

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  • NASA fuels moon rocket in crucial test to decide when Artemis astronauts will launch

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA fueled its new moon rocket in one final make-or-break test Monday, with hopes of sending astronauts on a lunar fly-around as soon as this coming weekend.

    The launch team began loading the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket with super-cold hydrogen and oxygen at Kennedy Space Center late at midday. More than 700,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) had to flow into the tanks and remain on board for several hours, mimicking the final stages of an actual countdown.

    The only thing missing from the critical dress rehearsal was the crew. The three Americans and one Canadian monitored the action from nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Houston, home to Johnson Space Center. They have been in quarantine for the past 1½ weeks, awaiting the practice countdown’s outcome.

    The all-day operation will determine when they can blast off on the first lunar voyage by a crew in more than half a century.

    Running two days behind because of a bitter cold snap, NASA set its countdown clocks to stop a half-minute before reaching zero, just before engine ignition. The clocks began ticking Saturday night, giving launch controllers the chance to go through all the motions and deal with any lingering problems with the Space Launch System rocket. Hydrogen leaks kept the first SLS rocket on the pad for months in 2022. Launch managers said they’re confident the issues are behind them.

    If the fueling demo goes well, NASA could launch commander Reid Wiseman and his crew to the moon as soon as Sunday. The rocket must be flying by Feb. 11 or the mission will be called off until March. The space agency only has a few days in any given month to launch the rocket, and the extreme cold already has shortened February’s launch window by two days.

    The nearly 10-day mission will send the astronauts past the moon, around the mysterious far side and then straight back to Earth, with the goal of testing the capsule’s life support and other vital systems. The crew will not go into lunar orbit or attempt to land.

    NASA last sent astronauts to the moon during the 1960s and 1970s Apollo program. The new Artemis program aims for a more sustained lunar presence, with Wiseman’s crew setting the stage for future moon landings by other astronauts.

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  • NASA begins practice countdown for first moonshot with astronauts in over 50 years

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA began a two-day practice countdown Saturday leading up to the fueling of its new moon rocket, a crucial test that will determine when four astronauts blast off on a lunar flyby.

    Already in quarantine to avoid germs, Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew will be the first people to launch to the moon since 1972. They will monitor the dress rehearsal from their Houston base before flying to Kennedy Space Center once the rocket is cleared for flight.

    The 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket moved out to the pad two weeks ago. If Monday’s fueling test goes well, NASA could try to launch within a week. Teams will fill the rocket’s tank with more than 700,000 gallons of super-cold fuel, stopping a half-minute short of when the engines would light.

    A bitter cold spell delayed the fueling demo, and the launch, by two days. Feb. 8 is now the earliest the rocket could blast off.

    Riding in the Orion capsule on top of the rocket, the U.S. and Canadian astronauts will hurtle around the moon and then straight back without stopping until splashdown in the Pacific. The mission will last nearly 10 days.

    NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program, from 1968 to 1972. Twelve of them walked on the surface.

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  • NASA delays first Artemis moonshot with astronauts due to extreme cold at launch site

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has delayed astronauts’ upcoming trip to the moon because of near-freezing temperatures expected at the launch site.

    The first Artemis moonshot with a crew is now targeted for no earlier than Feb. 8, two days later than planned.

    NASA was all set to conduct a fueling test of the 322-foot (98-meter) moon rocket on Saturday, but called everything off late Thursday because of the expected cold.

    The critical dress rehearsal is now set for Monday, weather permitting. The change leaves NASA with only three days in February to send four astronauts around the moon and back, before slipping into March.

    “Any additional delays would result in a day for day change,” NASA said in a statement Friday.

    Heaters are keeping the Orion capsule warm atop the rocket, officials said, and rocket-purging systems are also being adapted to the cold.

    Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew remain in quarantine in Houston and their arrival at Kennedy Space Center in Florida is uncertain.

    NASA has only a handful of days any given month to launch its first lunar crew in more than half a century. Apollo 17 closed out that storied moon exploration program in 1972.

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  • NASA and families of fallen astronauts mark 40th anniversary of space shuttle Challenger accident

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Families of the astronauts lost in the space shuttle Challenger accident gathered back at the launch site Thursday to mark that tragic day 40 years ago.

    All seven on board were killed when Challenger broke apart following liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.

    At the Kennedy Space Center memorial ceremony, Challenger pilot Michael Smith’s daughter, Alison Smith Balch, said through tears that her life forever changed that frigid morning, as did many other lives. “In that sense,” she told the hundreds of mourners, “we are all part of this story.”

    “Every day I miss Mike,” added his widow, Jane Smith-Holcott, “every day’s the same.”

    The bitter cold weakened the O-ring seals in Challenger’s right solid rocket booster, causing the shuttle to rupture 73 seconds after liftoff. A dysfunctional culture at NASA contributed to that disaster and, 17 years later, shuttle Columbia’s.

    Kennedy Space Center’s deputy director Kelvin Manning said those humble and painful lessons require constant vigilance “now more than ever” with rockets soaring almost every day and the next astronaut moonshot just weeks away.

    Challenger’s crew included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was selected from thousands of applicants representing every state. Two of her fellow teacher-in-space contenders — both retired now — attended the memorial.

    “We were so close together,” said Bob Veilleux, a retired astronomy high school teacher from New Hampshire, McAuliffe’s home state.

    Bob Foerster, a sixth grade math and science teacher from Indiana who was among the top 10 finalists, said he’s grateful that space education blossomed after the accident and that it didn’t just leave Challenger’s final crew as “martyrs.”

    “It was a hard reality,” Foerster noted at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy’s visitor complex.

    Twenty-five names are carved into the black mirror-finished granite: the Challenger seven, the seven who perished in the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, the three killed in the Apollo 1 fire on Jan. 27, 1967, and all those lost in plane and other on-the-job accidents.

    Relatives of the fallen Columbia and Apollo crews also attended NASA’s Day of Remembrance, held each year on the fourth Thursday of January. The space agency also held ceremonies at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery and Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

    “You always wonder what they could have accomplished” had they lived longer, Lowell Grissom, brother of Apollo 1 commander Gus Grissom, said at Kennedy. “There was a lot of talent there.”

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  • NASA’s new moon rocket heads to pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.

    The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.

    The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1 mph (1.6 kph) creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile (six-kilometer) trek could take until nightfall.

    Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket’s exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.

    “What a great day to be here,” said Reid Wiseman, the crew commander. “It is awe-inspiring.”

    Weighing in at 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms), the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket’s extra heft.

    The first and only other SLS launch — which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon — took place back in November 2022.

    “This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” NASA’s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket’s rollout.

    Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyses and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts won’t orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will take come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.

    Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch — longtime NASA astronauts with spaceflight experience — will be joined on the 10-day mission by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.

    They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing program in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. Only four moonwalkers are still alive; Aldrin, the oldest, turns 96 on Tuesday.

    “They are so fired up that we are headed back to the moon,” Wiseman said. “They just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible discovering the unknown.”

    NASA is waiting to conduct a fueling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date.

    “We’ve, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date” until completing the fueling demo, Isaacman told reporters.

    The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • The moon and sun figure big in the new year’s lineup of cosmic wonders

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The moon and sun share top billing in 2026.

    Kicking off the year’s cosmic wonders is the moon, drawing the first astronauts to visit in more than 50 years as well as a caravan of robotic lunar landers including Jeff Bezos’ new supersized Blue Moon. A supermoon looms on Jan. 3 and an astronomical blue moon is on the books for May.

    The sun will also generate buzz with a ring-of-fire eclipse at the bottom of the world in February and a total solar eclipse at the top of the world in August. Expect more auroras in unexpected places, though perhaps not as frequently as the past couple years.

    And that comet that strayed into our turf from another star? While still visible with powerful backyard telescopes, the recently discovered comet known as 3I/Atlas is fading by the day after swinging past Earth in December. Jupiter is next on its dance card in March. Once the icy outsider departs our solar system a decade from now, it will be back where it belongs in interstellar space.

    It’s our third known interstellar visitor. Scientists anticipate more.

    “I can’t believe it’s taken this long to find three,” said NASA’s Paul Chodas, who’s been on the lookout since the 1980s. And with ever better technology, “the chance of catching another interstellar visitor will increase.”

    Here’s a rundown on what the universe has in store for us in 2026:

    NASA’s upcoming moonshot commander Reid Wiseman said there’s a good chance he and his crew will be the first to lay eyeballs on large swaths of the lunar far side that were missed by the Apollo astronauts a half-century ago. Their observations could be a boon for geologists, he noted, and other experts picking future landing sites.

    Launching early in the year, the three Americans and one Canadian will zip past the moon, do a U-turn behind it, then hustle straight back to Earth to close out their 10-day mission. No stopping for a moonwalk — the boot prints will be left by the next crew in NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program.

    More robotic moon landings are on the books by China as well as U.S. companies. Early in the year, Amazon founder Bezos is looking for his Blue Origin rocket company to launch a prototype of the lunar lander it’s designing for NASA’s astronauts. This Blue Moon demo will stand 26 feet (8 meters), taller than what delivered Apollo’s 12 moonwalkers to the lunar surface. The Blue Moon version for crew will be almost double that height.

    Back for another stab at the moon, Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are also targeting 2026 landings with scientific gear. The only private entity to nail a lunar landing, Firefly Aerospace, will aim for the moon’s far side in 2026.

    China is targeting the south polar region in the new year, sending a rover as well as a so-called hopper to jump into permanently shadowed craters in search of ice.

    The cosmos pulls out all the stops with a total solar eclipse on Aug. 12 that will begin in the Arctic and cross over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Totality will last two minutes and 18 seconds as the moon moves directly between Earth and the sun to blot out the latter. By contrast, the total solar eclipse in 2027 will offer a whopping 6 1/2 minutes of totality and pass over more countries.

    For 2026, the warm-up act will be a ring-of-fire eclipse in the Antarctic on Feb. 17, with only a few research stations in prime viewing position. South Africa and southernmost Chile and Argentina will have partial viewing. A total lunar eclipse will follow two weeks after February’s ring of fire, with a partial lunar eclipse closing out the action at the end of August.

    Six of the solar system’s eight planets will prance across the sky in a must-see lineup around Feb. 28. A nearly full moon is even getting into the act, appearing alongside Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune will require binoculars or telescopes. But Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn should be visible with the naked eye shortly after sunset, weather permitting, though Mercury and Venus will be low on the horizon.

    Mars will be the lone no-show. The good news is that the red planet will join a six-planet parade in August, with Venus the holdout.

    Three supermoons will lighten up the night skies in 2026, the stunning result when a full moon inches closer to Earth than usual as it orbits in a not-quite-perfect circle. Appearing bigger and brighter, supermoons are a perennial crowd pleaser requiring no equipment, only your eyes.

    The year’s first supermoon in January coincides with a meteor shower, but the moonlight likely will obscure the dimmer fireballs. The second supermoon of 2026 won’t occur until Nov. 24, with the third — the year’s final and closest supermoon — occurring the night of Dec. 23 into Dec. 24. This Christmas Eve supermoon will pass within 221,668 miles (356,740 kilometers) of Earth.

    The sun is expected to churn out more eruptions in 2026 that could lead to geomagnetic storms here on Earth, giving rise to stunning aurora. Solar action should start to ease, however, with the 11-year solar cycle finally on the downslide.

    Space weather forecasters like Rob Steenburgh at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration can’t wait to tap into all the solar wind measurements coming soon from an observatory launched in the fall.

    “2026 will be an exciting year for space weather enthusiasts,” he said in an email, with this new spacecraft and others helping scientists “better understand our nearest star and forecast its impacts.”

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • NASA loses contact with its Maven spacecraft orbiting Mars for the past decade

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    This combination of ultraviolet spectrum images provided by NASA shows atmospheric features of the planet Mars in July 2022, left, during the southern hemisphere’s summer season, and the planet’s northern hemisphere in January 2023 after Mars had passed the farthest point in its orbit from the Sun, captured by the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft. (NASA/LASP/CU Boulder via AP)

    The Associated Press

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  • US-Russian crew of 3 blasts off to the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft

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    In this photo taken from video released by Roscosmos space corporation, the Soyuz-2.1 rocket booster with Soyuz MS-28 space ship carrying NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev, a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off in Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. (Roscosmos space corporation, via AP)

    The Associated Press

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  • Boeing’s Next Starliner Flight Will Only Be Allowed to Carry Cargo

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    The US space agency ended months of speculation about the next flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, confirming that the vehicle will carry only cargo to the International Space Station.

    NASA and Boeing are now targeting no earlier than April 2026 to fly the uncrewed Starliner-1 mission, the space agency said. Launching by next April will require completion of rigorous test, certification, and mission readiness activities, NASA added in a statement.

    “NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a statement.

    Reducing Crewed Missions

    NASA also said it has reached an agreement with Boeing to modify the Commercial Crew contract, signed in 2014, that called for six crewed flights to the space station following certification of the spacecraft. Now the plan is to fly Starliner-1 carrying cargo, and then up to three additional missions before the space station is retired.

    “This modification allows NASA and Boeing to focus on safely certifying the system in 2026, execute Starliner’s first crew rotation when ready, and align our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on station’s operational needs through 2030,” Stich said.

    SpaceX and Boeing were both awarded contracts in 2014 to develop crewed spacecraft and fly six operational missions to the space station. SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon vehicle, flew a successful crew test flight in mid-2020 and its first operational mission before the end of that year. Most recently, the Crew-11 mission launched in August, with Crew-12 presently scheduled for February 15.

    Dragon has served as a reliable transport system for NASA as Boeing has faced development struggles.

    Starliner’s first flight in December 2019, without crew, had to be truncated after software problems plagued the vehicle. It was nearly lost shortly after launch as well as before atmospheric reentry. It did not make a planned rendezvous with the space station.

    The second mission, Orbital Flight Test 2, took place in May 2022. Because of problems on the previous mission, this spacecraft also flew uncrewed. This flight was more successful, reaching the space station despite some thruster issues.

    Orbital Flight Test 3?

    NASA then spent more than two years testing Starliner on the ground before its first crewed flight in 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. During its approach to the space station, the Starliner spacecraft once again experienced serious thruster issues. (However, the life-and-death nature of this flight was not revealed until nearly a year later.) Starliner ultimately docked with the station, but after heated deliberations, NASA informed Boeing that the vehicle would return to Earth uncrewed.

    As a result, a Dragon mission was launched later in 2024 carrying just two astronauts instead of a full complement of four. This allowed for the safe return of Wilmore and Williams in March 2025.

    Since then, it has appeared likely that Boeing would be required to fly an uncrewed mission to demonstrate the safety of Starliner’s propulsion system, but this was not confirmed until Monday.

    NASA has remained largely mum about the changes made to Boeing’s propulsion system and the tests it has undergone on the ground. Part of the problem with diagnosing the thruster issues is that the problems occurred in the “service module” portion of the spacecraft, which is jettisoned before the vehicle reenters Earth’s atmosphere and returns to Earth.

    This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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    Eric Berger, Ars Technica

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  • China launches Shenzhou 22 spacecraft to assist in return of 3 astronauts

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    BEIJING — China launched the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft on Tuesday to help bring back a team of astronauts after a damaged spacecraft left them temporarily stranded on China’s space station.

    The Shenzhou 22 will be used sometime in 2026 by the three astronauts who docked on the Tiangong space station on Nov. 1.

    Earlier this month, another group of Chinese astronauts from the Shenzhou 20 mission faced a nine-day delay in their return to Earth after their craft’s window was damaged. They eventually returned using the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, which had just carried the replacement crew to Tiangong.

    While the three-person crew landed safely on Earth, three of their fellow astronauts on the replacement crew were temporarily left without a guaranteed way to return in case of an emergency.

    The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft — the damaged one, which for now remains in space — will be brought down to Earth later and assessed, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The space program determined it didn’t meet safety standards for transporting the astronauts.

    Chinese astronauts have been carrying out missions to the Tiangong space station in recent years as part of Beijing’s rapidly progressing space program, initially building out the station module-by-module.

    China developed Tiangong after the country was excluded from the International Space Station over U.S. national security concerns, since China’s space program is controlled by its military.

    Tiangong, which means “Heavenly Palace,” hosted its first crew in 2021. It is smaller than the International Space Station, which has been operating for 25 years.

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  • Boeing’s troubled capsule won’t carry astronauts on next space station flight

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead perform a trial run with cargo to prove its safety.

    Monday’s announcement comes eight months after the first and only Starliner crew returned to Earth aboard SpaceX after a prolonged mission. Although NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams managed to dock Starliner to the International Space Station in 2024, the capsule had so many problems that NASA ordered it to come back empty, leaving the astronauts stuck there for more than nine months.

    Engineers have since been poring over the thruster and other issues that plagued the Starliner capsule. Its next cargo run to the space station will occur no earlier than April, pending additional tests and certification.

    Boeing said in a statement that it remains committed to the Starliner program with safety the highest priority.

    NASA is also slashing the planned number of Starliner flights, from six to four. If the cargo mission goes well, then that will leave the remaining three Starliner flights for crew exchanges before the space station is decommissioned in 2030.

    “NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year,” NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said in a statement.

    NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 — three years after the final space shuttle flight — to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost. The Boeing contract was worth $4.2 billion and SpaceX’s $2.6 billion.

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its first astronaut mission for NASA in 2020. Its 12th crew liftoff for NASA was this summer.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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