Virgin Galactic faces even more setbacks in its paid space travel. Reuters reports that Virgin has postponed its first commercial research flight, Unity 23, to mid-October. The mission was originally scheduled for late September or early October, but a supplier warned of a possible “manufacturing defect” in the flight control actuation system, Virgin said. It … Read more
On May 5, 1961, Commander Alan Shepard steered his Mercury Freedom 7 spacecraft 116 miles above the surface of the planet to become the first American to enter Earth orbit. Last Sunday, Sir Richard Branson was escorted aboard the SpaceShipTwo Unity by Virgin Galactic to an altitude of 80 kilometers. Somehow these men are both … Read more
The Artemis I mission to the moon took some big strides when NASA recently unveiled its powerful, partially assembled SLS rocket (below). Now the space agency is asking for help naming their first (non-human) passenger, or “Moonikin”, who will fly aboard the Orion capsule. The dummy will fly on the first mission to collect data … Read more
During Microsoft’s E3 2021 show on Sunday, we got a good look at the Flight Simulator running on an Xbox Series X, but the trailer lacked the context of how the game was performing on consoles. We now have an answer. In a Twitter response discovered by Eurogamer, Microsoft confirmed that the X and S … Read more
It’s been a busy spring for many of us, but hopefully no one has forgotten that NASA is currently flying a drone on another planet. The Ingenuity helicopter recently completed its sixth flight. However, a new problem arose with this issue – a timing issue with images being received from its navcam gave the helicopter … Read more
When NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made its third flight in April, the ground team met the last of the three goals required to label the technology demo project a success. For this reason, for its fourth test flight, the Ingenuity team wants to improve the performance of the machine on Mars by flying further over more … Read more
A small robotic helicopter named Ingenuity made history in space exploration on Monday as it took off from the surface of Mars and floated in the blurry air of the red planet. It was the first machine from Earth to fly over another world like an airplane or a helicopter. The achievement extends the long, … Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter’s first flight test plans have been postponed after failing to complete a test last weekend. Now the team behind it says that the vehicle has completed a turn at full speed. As described in a blog post and video update, the team appears to have taken two approaches to solving the problem … Read more
New Shepard’s booster descends to Blue Origin’s landing pad. (Blue origin via YouTube) The Blue Origin space project by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos flew a mannequin into space today during the 15th test flight for its reusable suborbital spaceship New Shepard – but for the first time living, breathing people practiced every step before takeoff … Read more
A rendering of the Ever Given container ship, which is stuck in the Suez Canal, is shown in a “Microsoft Flight Simulator” video released on TikTok. (TikTok screenshot via @donut_enforcement) Nothing like a couple of current events prying into your video game. The saga of a container ship that has been stuck in the Suez … Read more