The second of two planned scientific balloon flights for NASA’s 2025 New Zealand Super Pressure Balloon Campaign successfully lifted off from Wānaka Airport, New Zealand, at 11:38 a.m. NZST, Sunday, May 4 (7:38 p.m., Saturday, May 3 in U.S. Eastern Time). The 18.8 million-cubic-foot super pressure balloon will ascend over the next few hours until […]
More than 16 days after lifting off from Wānaka, New Zealand, NASA’s football-stadium-sized super pressure balloon has completed its first full circumnavigation of the globe — a significant milestone for the test flight around the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes. The balloon crossed the 169.24 east longitude line at 7:22 a.m. Saturday, May 3 (U.S. Eastern Time). […]
The Expedition 73 crew members are cleaning up after a spacewalk on Thursday to upgrade power systems on the International Space Station. The lab residents also continued research and maintenance activities aboard the orbital outpost.
By Wayne Smith Ahh, spring. Trees are budding, flowers are blooming. Birds are singing and baseball is back. As the old English proverb says, April showers bring May flowers. And skywatchers will soon have an additional reason to enjoy nature’s regeneration – the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which will streak across the night sky following […]
Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida successfully integrated the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s upper stage May 1, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, marking another key step toward preparing to launch the agency’s Artemis II crewed test flight around the Moon. Technicians with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program stacked the upper stage, […]
NASA and the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) signed an agreement May 2 for KASA to fly a CubeSat on NASA’s Artemis II test flight next year. K-Rad Cube will use a dosimeter made of material designed to mimic human tissue to measure space radiation and assess biological effects at various altitudes across the Van Allen […]
NASA’s TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) now is targeting no earlier than summer 2025 for launch in order to give the mission spacecraft team additional time to prepare. The mission is a pair of satellites that will study how the solar wind — the continuous stream of ionized particles escaping the Sun […]
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are targeting June 2025 for launch of the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite mission. The first mission to carry both L-band and S-band radar, NISAR will scan nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The mission will measure changes in the […]
The second scientific balloon in NASA’s 2025 New Zealand Super Pressure Balloon Campaign is now flight-ready and awaits a next launch opportunity from the agency’s dedicated mid-latitude launch site at Wānaka Airport, New Zealand. This will be the second and final balloon to launch for the campaign. The 18.8-million-cubic-foot (532,000-cubic-meter) helium-filled balloon will travel the […]
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers concluded their spacewalk at 2:49 p.m. EDT. The total time was 5 hours and 44 minutes. It was the third spacewalk for McClain and the first for Ayers, and the 275th spacewalk in support of space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades. McClain and Ayers completed their primary objectives, including […]
