Category: Missions
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T-1 days until #PlutoFlyby
By this time tomorrow NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will be zooming past the Dwarf Plant Pluto capturing details of the planet from just 12,500 km (7,800 mi) away closer than any spacecraft has ever been. The spacecraft is now deep in the encounter mode of operation, this means that if anything goes wrong it will…
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T-7 days and counting to New Horizons Pluto Flyby
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is just 7 days away from its closest approach to Pluto, and this week we are going to look at the amazing images that have already been returned. As the spacecraft gets closer and closer we are going to learn much more about the Planet and its moons. Before we take…
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New Horizons Suffers Safe-Mode event
Just 10 days before New Horizons closest approach to Pluto it suffered a Safe-Mode event on Saturday causing a lost of communications when the spacecraft handled the event and switched to its backup computer system. Thankfully the backup system took over and re-established communications and begun sending data back to Mission Control to allow them…
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T-14 days and counting to New Horizons Pluto Flyby
A journey that started 3451 days ago aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V is rapidly closing in on its primary destination Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first to visit the Pluto system and will bring the distant planet and its five moons to life. In 14 days it will reach its…
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LightSail deployment planned for Wednesday
Following the successful resumption of communications with the LightSail spacecraft the mission team are planning to deploy the Solar Sails on Wednesday this week. They were looking to deploy on Tuesday but to ensure everything is working as needed they added an extra day to the plan. The LightSail team will use tomorrow for a…
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LightSail is back
Following a week of silence caused by a software fault on the LightSail spacecraft it started communicating with Earth earlier today. LIGHTSAIL CONTACT! Cal Poly received two beacon packets today during a pass at 5:21 EDT (21:21 UTC). Initial analysis shows reboot occurred. — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) May 30, 2015 As the tweet above shows…
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UPDATE – LightSail falls silent
Last week the Planetary Society launched the first privately funded Solar Sail spacecraft as a secondary payload on a Atlas V rocket. During the first couple of days the spacecraft was transmitting data back to Earth during various passes over the ground stations. However the teams have not heard from the spacecraft since, they are…
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LightSail in orbit
The first privately built Solar Sail spacecraft LightSail is now in orbit. Built by the Planetary Society the spacecraft was launched as a secondary payload on the Atlas V that launched earlier today. The successful deployment of the CubeSat was confirmed by the Societies Jason Davies via Twitter. Official #LightSail deployment time: 17:05:40.620, hh:mm:ss.sss (UTC).…
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NASA’s MMS mission launched
Following a smooth countdown this evening NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) satellites launched aboard a ULA Altas 5. The MMS mission consists of four spacecraft, that will be deployed into orbit later this evening following the second burn of the centaur, and will then begin to deploy there various instruments to allow them to measure the interaction…
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NASA’s New Horizons within One AU of Pluto
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is now less than one AU from Pluto and moving closer by 873,000 miles per day. This week it made a slight course correction to ensure it is able to complete the scientific objectives as it flies past the planet in July. Launched in Jan 2006 the spacecraft has traveled past Jupiter on…