Firefly Aerospace sticks moon landing with flawless Blue Ghost touchdown
The Blue Ghost touchdown kicks off two weeks of around-the-clock research by NASA science and technology payloads.
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Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia."
The Blue Ghost touchdown kicks off two weeks of around-the-clock research by NASA science and technology payloads.
The Blue Ghost lunar lander privately developed by Firefly Aerospace is carrying a suite of sophisticated instruments to the moon for NASA.
Intuitive Machines launches its second moon lander, which will use NASA and commercially developed tools to search for ice in the moon's crust.
By switching the next space station crew to a different ferry ship, the Starliner astronauts will get home a bit earlier than planned.
Starliner astronaut Sunita Williams says she and crewmate Butch Wilmore have not been "abandoned" in space, as NASA considers plans to speed their return.
Starliner co-pilot Sunita Williams is now the world's most experienced female spacewalker, moving up to number four overall.
Posts by President Trump and Elon Musk roiled the space community, raising the prospect of an earlier-than-planned return for the Starliner crew.
A fire in the aft section of SpaceX's Starship trigged the apparent explosion that destroyed the spacecraft, the company says.
Telemetry from the Starship froze just more than 8 minutes after launch from Texas, moments after engines began shutting down.
Despite losing its booster during a landing attempt, the upper stage reached orbit as planned.
If the weather cooperates, the Starship launch will follow the maiden flight of Jeff Bezos' already weather-delayed New Glenn rocket.
Firefly's "Blue Moon" and ispace's "Resilience" are the latest in an ongoing push to gain private-sector experience exploring the moon.
Blue Origin expects the New Glenn to provide a viable alternative to SpaceX's market-dominating Falcon family of rockets.
NASA hopes a revised plan will get Mars samples back to Earth faster and cost less than the agency's original plan.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says he's optimistic the Trump administration will support the space agency's agenda.