A Year Later, The American Space Program Seeks Definition After The Shuttle Era

It was just a year ago... and the dream was nearly over. After decades of watching American ingenuity and perseverance launch hundreds of people into space, we were about to relegate our last manned launch system to the scrap heap of history... with no real way to know when that capability might someday be restored -- if ever. It was STS-134... the last flight of Endeavour.

Will Be Available For Use In Future Missions

NASA has announced a modification of its NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, CA, to add an additional configuration of the Falcon 9 rocket to its fleet.

Environmental Assessment Supports Expansion At Launch Complex 36B, Enables Joint FAA Launch Site Operators License For LC-36 And LC-46.

Space Florida will finalize an Environmental Assessment (EA) this summer that will enable the expansion of its two launch sites at Cape Canaveral Spaceport, Launch Complexes 36 and 46. The EA supports the expansion of LC-36 – specifically Pad B – to enable static test firing of all varieties and sizes of rocket motors and launch of university-developed or other small sounding rockets.

Two Russians, One American To Join ISS Crew

NASA Flight Engineer Joseph Acaba, Russian Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin lifted off for the International Space Station at 2301 EDT Monday, May 14 (0901 Baikonur time on May 15), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Dune Shifts Similar To Those Seen On Earth

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth. This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth's.

SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace Join Forces to Offer Crewed Missions To BA 330 Habitats

There will come a time when privately-held space stations orbit the Earth ... and it may be coming sooner than you think. But crews will have to be transported to those facilities, and that's where a company like SpaceX comes in. On Thursday, SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace (BA) said they have agreed to conduct a joint marketing effort focused on international customers.

To Study Storms' Impact On The Upper Troposphere

NASA researchers have flown off on a campaign that is taking them into the heart of thunderstorm country. The Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) field campaign is using an airport in Salina, KS, as a base to explore the impact of large thunderstorms on the concentration of ozone and other substances in the upper troposphere.