John Glenn's passing on Thursday means that the first seven American astronauts chosen to lead the fledging US space program in 1959 are now dead, ending a groundbreaking chapter in American history.
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The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.
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Notable events in the history of human space exploration:
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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo accident proved what astronauts and their families know too well: Space can be deadly.
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The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has now been in orbit for 25 years and this achievement has been a wonderful excuse to pore over the telescope's beautiful imagery, to consider its valuable contribution to science, to remember ...
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SpaceX's Dragon cargo vessel smells like a new car, said astronauts at the International Space Station after opening the hatches Saturday following the spacecraft's landmark mission to the orbiting lab.
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Private US company SpaceX hopes to put an astronaut on Mars within 10 to 20 years, the head of the firm said.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- European space agencies and an aerospace giant are developing a new re-entry heat shield that will use superconductor magnets to generate a magnetic field strong enough to deflect the superhot plasma formed ...
New movies of two of the most famous objects in the sky—the Crab Nebula and Cassiopeia A—are being released from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Each includes X-ray data collected by Chandra over about two decades. ...
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Who will take the giant leap for womankind?
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NASA's Space Shuttle, officially named the Space Transportation System (STS), is the spacecraft currently used by the United States government for its human spaceflight missions and is scheduled to be retired from service in 2010. At launch, it consists of a rust-colored external tank (ET), two white, slender Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), and the orbiter, which is a winged spaceplane in the narrowest sense.
The orbiter carries astronauts and payload such as satellites or space station parts into low earth orbit, into the Earth's upper atmosphere or thermosphere. Usually, five to seven crew members ride in the orbiter. The payload capacity is 22,700 kilograms (50,000 lb). When the orbiter's mission is complete it fires its Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) thrusters to drop out of orbit and re-enters the lower atmosphere. During the descent, the shuttle orbiter decelerates from hypersonic speed primarily by aerobraking and then for the landing phase it acts as a glider, making a completely unpowered (deadstick) landing.
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