NASA's first-ever asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer), was launched September 8, 2016 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft thus started its two-year 193…
NASA's Juno spacecraft has executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on August 27, 2016, when it came about 4 200 km (2 500 miles) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. It was Juno's first flyby with instruments switch on and it sent back first-ever images of…
European Space Agency reported today that a solar panel on its Copernicus Sentinel-1A satellite was hit by a millimetre-size (0.04 inches) space particle in orbit on August 23, 2016. Thanks to onboard cameras, ground controllers were able to identify the affected…
Have you ever looked up at the night sky and seen a strange, slowly moving light cross the horizon? Chances are it wasn’t an alien spacecraft, but instead, the International Space Station flying by. This extraordinary structure has been in orbit since 1998 and…
After 22 months of failed communication attempts, NASA's Deep Space Network has finally reestablished communication with STEREO-B solar observatory. The STEREO Missions Operations team plans further recovery processes to assess observatory health, re-establish…
In September or early October 2016, NASA will launch its first mission to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth…
China has successfully launched the world's first quantum communication satellite – Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) – from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gobi Desert at 17:40 UTC on August 16, 2016 (01:40 local time on August 17)….
A flotilla of 50 CubeSats, miniaturized satellites weighing an average of 2 kg (4.4 lb) each, will be launched from the ground and the International Space Station in the European-led QB50 mission to explore the little-understood region above Earth known as the…
NASA's Solar Probe Plus mission has moved one step closer to its launch, scheduled for summer 2018, after passing a design review. After the successful review, the mission will transition to final assembly and implementation. It is the first mission into the…
New research, based on data from ESA's Venus Express satellite, for the first time reveals how the weather patterns on Venus are directly connected to the surface topography of the planet. Results suggest the Venus' thick cloud cover could offer further…
