Latest news with #spacecraft
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
An Iconic NASA Probe Is at Threat of Being Shut Down Due to Trump Cuts
On July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, revealing unprecedented close-up views of the complex icy world. The iconic mission is still returning data from the far reaches of the solar system, but a lack of funding now threatens to end the mission prematurely. As NASA celebrates the 10th anniversary of the historic Pluto flyby, the space agency is also bracing for budget cuts that threaten the historic New Horizons probe. The White House's budget proposal, released in May, reduces NASA's upcoming budget by $6 billion compared to 2025. Under the proposed budget, NASA's planetary science budget would drop from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. The severe drop in funding would kill dozens of active and planned missions, including New Horizons. New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, and traveled 9 billion miles in nine and a half years to become the first spacecraft to reach Pluto. Its journey through the harsh space environment wasn't the only challenge; members of the space community advocated for nearly 20 years for the approval of the spacecraft, according to The Planetary Society. At the time, NASA missions to Pluto were deemed not worth the cost. As a result, New Horizons was nearly canceled on multiple occasions due to budgeting conflicts. In 2002, the White House tried to kill the mission after NASA had already started developing it, but a massive backlash forced Congress to step in and restore New Horizons' funding. Despite its rocky start, New Horizons is now hailed as one of the most successful planetary missions. Following its close encounter with Pluto, the mission revealed that the icy planet and its moons are far more complex than scientists had initially assumed. New Horizons imaged a giant, heart-shaped icy plain on Pluto, which may sit above a subsurface ocean. It also revealed cryovolcanoes, indicating a geologically active body and not a dead, frozen world. The mission also explored Pluto's icy, chaotic moons, which rotate chaotically. Beyond Pluto, New Horizons continues to explore the outer reaches of the solar system. The spacecraft is shedding light on the mysterious planets and smaller objects of the outer solar system. In January 2019, New Horizons conducted the most distant flyby of a Kuiper Belt object when it explored Arrokoth, a frozen relic in the icy region beyond Neptune. The double-lobed object serves as a relic from the early solar system. The successful Arrokoth flyby earned New Horizons a mission extension, allowing the spacecraft to continue exploring until it exits the Kuiper Belt in 2029. 'The New Horizons mission has a unique position in our solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and provide extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community,' Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement at the time. New Horizons has enough fuel to carry out another flyby of a Kuiper Belt object, and mission teams are currently searching for its next possible target. If the current budget proposal is approved, New Horizons will be turned off long before its expiration date, which would cost us years of valuable data. After Voyager 1 and 2, the New Horizons spacecraft is the third most distant human-built object from Earth. It would take years for another spacecraft to reach that distance. 'We're the only spacecraft out there,' Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons, told The Planetary Society. 'There's nothing else planned to come this way.'
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- Science
- South China Morning Post
China's Tianzhou-9 cargo craft launches for Tiangong space station resupply mission
Read more about this: China said it successfully launched its Tianzhou-9 cargo spacecraft on July 15, 2025. The spacecraft is delivering 6.5 tonnes of supplies for the orbiting Tiangong Space Station. The Long March-7 Y10 rocket carrying the spacecraft lifted off at 5.34am from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in China's southern island province of Hainan, according to the China Manned Space Agency. The Tianzhou-9 separated from the rocket and entered its designated orbit about 10 minutes after blast-off.
Times of Oman
2 days ago
- Science
- Times of Oman
Splashdown!: The Dragon has landed, Group Captain Shukla piloted Ax-4 mission back on earth
Houston: SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft 'Grace' successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Tuesday, marking the safe return of the Axiom-4 (Ax-4) crew, including pilot Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian to visit the International Space Station (ISS). The splashdown, confirmed by SpaceX, concludes a nearly 19-day mission aboard the ISS, fulfilling a significant milestone in Indo-US space cooperation. "Splashdown of Dragon confirmed - welcome back to Earth, @AstroPeggy, Shux, @astro_slawosz, and Tibi!" in a post on X. Earlier, SpaceX stated that set for a splashdown on earth off the coast of California in as the nosecone of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft 'Grace' has been closed and secured for reentry. SpaceX made the announcement of the mission in a post on X, as the mission marks the final stages of the crew's return from the International Space Station (ISS) after almost 20 days in space. The re-entry was done following the completion of the deorbit burn and the jettisoning of the trunk, as confirmed by SpaceX. "Dragon's nosecone is closed and secured for reentry. Splashdown in ~26 minutes," SpaceX stated in a post on X. "Dragon's deorbit burn is complete and the trunk has been jettisoned," stated another post. The crew returned to earth in approximately 22.5 hours from the ISS. Earlier, on Monday, the Ax-4 successfully undocked and was making their way back to Earth, as observed by Axiom Space and NASA. In an informative blog about the mission updates, NASA informed that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked at 7:15 am EDT or 4:45 pm IST from the space-facing port of the International Space Station's Harmony module, completing the fourth private astronaut mission to the orbiting laboratory, Axiom Mission 4. Axiom Space, in its live session on X, noted that the Axiom-4 mission saw over 60 scientific studies and more than 20 outreach events. The Ax-4 crew, comprising Commander Peggy Whitson, Pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), European Space Agency (ESA) project astronaut Slawosz "Suave" Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, and Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) astronaut Tibor Kapu, had been actively engaged in research and outreach activities aboard the ISS as part of the mission during the past 18-days. As per NASA, the Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth with more than 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments conducted during the mission. Axiom Mission 4 was launched on June 25 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS on June 26 at 4:05 pm IST, ahead of schedule, connecting to the space-facing port of the station's Harmony module.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA just took the closest-ever images of the sun, and they are incredible (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's Parker Solar Probe is no stranger to breaking records. On Dec. 24, 2024, Parker made history by flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history. The probe reached a distance of just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the solar surface, entering the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona. During this flyby, it also reached a top speed of 430,000 miles per hour (690,000 kilometers per hour), breaking its own record as the fastest ever human-made object. Now, NASA has released remarkable video captured during the historic flyby, offering the closest views of the sun ever recorded. The new images were captured with Parker's Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR, revealing a never-before-seen view of the sun's corona and solar winds shortly after they are released from the corona. Video not playing? Some ad blockers can disable our video player. "Parker Solar Probe has once again transported us into the dynamic atmosphere of our closest star," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement accompanying the images. "We are witnessing where space weather threats to Earth begin, with our eyes, not just with models. This new data will help us vastly improve our space weather predictions to ensure the safety of our astronauts and the protection of our technology here on Earth and throughout the solar system." WISPR's images revealed an important boundary in the sun's atmosphere called the heliospheric current sheet, where the sun's magnetic field changes direction from north to south. It also captured, for the first time in high resolution, collisions between multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are major drivers of space weather, and are important in understanding risks to astronauts and technology on Earth such as power grids and communications satellites. "In these images, we're seeing the CMEs basically piling up on top of one another," said Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR instrument scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which designed, built, and operates the spacecraft in Laurel, Maryland. "We're using this to figure out how the CMEs merge together." Before the Parker Solar Probe, NASA and its international partners could only study solar wind from afar, which is why the spacecraft has been instrumental in closing key knowledge gaps. It identified the widespread presence of "switchbacks" — zig-zagging magnetic field patterns — around 14.7 million miles from the sun and linked them to the origins of one of the two main types of solar wind. Closer in, at just 8 million miles, Parker discovered that the boundary of the sun's corona is far more uneven and complex than previously believed. But more remained to be discovered. "The big unknown has been: how is the solar wind generated, and how does it manage to escape the sun's immense gravitational pull?" said Nour Rawafi, the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "Understanding this continuous flow of particles, particularly the slow solar wind, is a major challenge, especially given the diversity in the properties of these streams — but with Parker Solar Probe, we're closer than ever to uncovering their origins and how they evolve." Prior to Parker Solar Probe, distant observations suggested there are actually two varieties of slow solar wind, distinguished by the orientation or variability of their magnetic fields. One type of slow solar wind, called Alfvénic, has small-scale switchbacks. The second type, called non-Alfvénic, doesn't show these variations in its magnetic field. As it spiraled closer to the sun, Parker Solar Probe confirmed there are indeed two types of solar wind. Its close-up views are also helping scientists differentiate the origins of the two types, which scientists believe are unique. The non-Alfvénic wind may come off features called helmet streamers — large loops connecting active regions where some particles can heat up enough to escape — whereas Alfvénic wind might originate near coronal holes, or dark, cool regions in the corona. "We don't have a final consensus yet, but we have a whole lot of new intriguing data," said Adam Szabo, Parker Solar Probe mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Parker Solar Probe is built to endure extreme conditions — from the freezing cold of deep space to the intense heat near the sun. A key factor in its survival is the difference between temperature and heat. While space near the sun can reach temperatures of several million degrees, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a lot of heat. This is because the sun's corona is extremely thin, meaning there are fewer particles. Even though individual particles in the corona are incredibly hot, there aren't many. The probe, therefore, doesn't receive much heat. "While Parker Solar Probe will be traveling through a space with temperatures of several million degrees, the surface of [its] heat shield that faces the sun will only get heated to about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,400 degrees Celsius)," write NASA scientists. These temperatures are, of course, still incredibly hot, which makes its heat shield, the Thermal Protection System (TPS), essential. The shield is made from a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates. Carbon is ideal for this purpose because it is both lightweight and able to withstand extremely high temperatures without melting. "Tested to withstand up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), the TPS can handle any heat the sun can send its way, keeping almost all instrumentation safe," explained NASA. Its structure allows it to endure intense heat while minimizing weight, making it crucial for a spacecraft that needs to travel at extreme speeds. The outer surface of the TPS is also coated with a white ceramic paint, which helps reflect as much solar energy as possible and further reduces the amount of heat absorbed.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
SpaceX spacecraft carrying crew to splash down with sonic boom off San Diego coast
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A sonic boom is expected to break the silence in the middle of the night Tuesday as a SpaceX spacecraft carrying a crew is expected to splash down off the coast of San Diego. SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 7:15 a.m. Monday, carrying Ax-4 astronauts Peggy Whitson, Shubhandshu Shukla, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, and Tibor Kapu. SpaceX launch seen from San Diego area The crew will return to Earth at 2:31 a.m. PT on Tuesday, which will be streamed live on X @SpaceX. After performing a series of departure burns to move away from the International Space Station, SpaceX says Dragon will conduct multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, jettison the trunk, and re-enter Earth's atmosphere before splashing down off the coast of California 22.5 hours later. SpaceX spacecraft splashes down off coast of Oceanside SpaceX Monday evening on X said Dragon and the Ax-4 crew are on track to reenter Earth's atmosphere and splash down off the coast of southern San Diego County at 2:31 a.m. PT Tuesday. The spacecraft is expected to create a sonic boom just before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. The Ax-4 crew had been onboard the ISS since Falcon 9 launched the spacecraft from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, June 25. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
