Page 15 - For Launch News Today

NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.

Just over 60 years since her dad became the first American in space, Laura Shepard Churchley will be among six passengers on a Blue Origin flight that will give her a taste of Alan Shepard experienced on his Freedom 7 flight in 1961.

The good news is that scientists have a better handle on asteroid Bennu’s whereabouts for the next 200 years. The bad news is that the space rock has a slightly greater chance of clobbering Earth than previously thought.

NASA has been aiming to get humans back to the moon by 2024, but an audit of the spacesuits needed for that venture warns that development issues are likely to delay the mission.

New Zealand announced Tuesday it was the latest country to sign a space agreement with NASA, just as New Zealand’s nascent space industry begins to take off.

New NASA Administrator Bill Nelson gave his first State of NASA address on Wednesday plotting out the agency’s plans to continue the Artemis program to return humans to the moon as well as new Earth-centric missions as part of the largest science budget ask ever for the agency.

Journalist Jay Barbree started covering space launches from Florida in 1957 - even before there was NASA.

With rubble from an asteroid tucked inside, a NASA spacecraft fired its engines and began the long journey back to Earth on Monday, leaving the ancient space rock in its rearview mirror.

The first six-month rotation of an International Space Station crew to be carried up and returned to Earth by commercial partner SpaceX is set to end in the early morning hours Sunday,

The biggest piece to a years-in-the-making rocket that will become the most powerful to ever launch off the planet arrives to Kennedy Space Center this week when the core stage for the Artemis I mission to the moon makes its way to Florida.