Stories about life and business about NASA’s orbiting lab.
Last week, a pair of cosmonauts aboard the ISS were all suited up for a spacewalk, ready to step out of the decompressed airlock, when flight controllers noticed that the Soyuz M-22 capsule docked with the station had sprung a leak. Over the past week, NASA and Roscosmos have been investigating the leak, which spilled […]
SpaceX launched its 26th ISS resupply mission on Saturday, hoisting roughly 7,700 pounds of hardware, food, cubesats, and scientific experiments to the station. NASA and SpaceX scrubbed a liftoff earlier in the week due to uncooperative weather. For the CRS-26 mission, SpaceX used a brand-new Falcon 9 booster (tail number B1076) and Cargo Dragon capsule. […]
The International Space Station has served as a beacon of international diplomacy, ground-breaking R&D, and scientific discovery for nearly 30 years. Its commercial follow-on could serve as a movie set, thanks to Axiom and its entertainment partner. The policy and regulatory challenges facing commercial space station developers were front and center at Thursday’s Beyond Earth […]
In January, NASA released an updated ISS Transition Plan to extend the station’s life through 2030. After that, the agency plans to decommission it by burning it up in the atmosphere and dropping whatever’s left in an uninhabited region of the South Pacific. The ISS, originally planned to deorbit after 15 years, is old enough […]
A new space station has moved one step closer to reality. Yesterday, Blue Origin and Sierra Space announced that their Orbital Reef project has passed its system definition review for NASA. The orbital outpost is now ready to enter the design phase. Orbital Reef 101 The ISS is destined for a watery grave in 2030—or […]
All is not well with the spacesuits aboard the ISS. Yesterday, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was instructed by Roscosmos ground control to “drop everything and go back” to the ISS when he was three hours into a spacewalk. The issue: a flaw in the Orlan EVA suit’s electrical system that caused an unexpected drop in […]
Redwire announced yesterday it will develop the first commercially owned and operated space greenhouse. The project, funded by an award from the ISS National Lab, will generate insights to support both crop science on Earth and future exploration missions. Redwire Greenhouse will take flight no earlier than spring 2023 and, if all goes to plan, […]
The in-space collaboration between the US and Russia may be coming to an end. Yesterday, newly installed Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov announced Moscow’s intention to walk away from the ISS partnership in 2024 and commence construction on its own space station. In recent memory… Russia’s hostile invasion of Ukraine almost immediately sent the already-strained ISS […]
China’s space station is almost finished. Over the weekend, the China Manned Space Agency launched the Wentian laboratory module to its in-progress Tiangong station atop a Long March 5B. Wentian successfully docked with the station earlier this morning after a 13-hour journey. Wentian: The lab module is the largest spacecraft that China has ever sent […]
Moscow removed Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin from his position on July 15, as part of a wider shake-up in the Russian government. No official reason was given for his ousting. Rogozin will be replaced by Yuri Borisov, who was previously the deputy prime minister for defense and space. Rogozin: Rogozin doubled down on his penchant for […]
Earlier this month, astronauts disposed of ~172 pounds of trash using a completely new method: sending it out of the commercial Bishop Airlock. Working with Houston, Nanoracks cycled its Bishop Airlock, ejected a specially designed trash bag, and voila, the ISS crew had less waste to worry about. “The first full end-to-end cycle was a […]
We’ve made it halfway through 2022. The year has flown by, but it’s been filled with big news and firsts for the space industry. Here’s our recap of the off-Earth goings-on during these last six months. Q1 The year started off with a bang as JWST unfolded successfully, reached its new home a million miles […]
