Following the completion of NASA’s flight readiness review, the second SpaceX demonstration launch for NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program is scheduled for April 30. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule will liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. There is a single instantaneous launch…

An asteroid that will be explored by a NASA spacecraft has a new name, thanks to a third-grade student in North Carolina. NASA’s Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will visit the asteroid now called Bennu, named after an important ancient Egyptian avian deity. OSIRIS-Rex is scheduled to launch in 2016, rendezvous with Bennu in…

Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers announced Dec. 12 they have seen further back in time than ever before and have uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 3 percent of its present age. The deepest images to date…

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a “super-Earth” planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets. “Spitzer has amazed us yet again,” said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist…

The Lockheed Martin team developing the U.S. Air Force’s next generation Global Positioning System III satellites has delivered the first spacecraft’s propulsion core module to the company’s Denver-area GPS Processing Facility. The milestone represents the program’s first major hardware delivery for GPS III Space Vehicle 1 and highlights the satellite’s initial Assembly, Integration and Test…

NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission has discovered a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth, revealing the existence of unexpected structures and processes within these hazardous regions of space. Previous observations of Earth’s Van Allen belts have long documented two distinct regions of trapped radiation surrounding our planet. Particle detection instruments aboard the twin Van…

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced three changes to his senior leadership team Sept. 25. Robert Lightfoot, acting associate administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington, will assume that role on a permanent basis. Patrick Scheuermann, director of NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss., will become director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight…