Tag Archives: Rocket Science and Propulsion

After looping through space for 53 years, a wayward Soviet spacecraft called Kosmos-482 returned to Earth, entering the dense layers of the planet’s atmosphere at 9:24 a.m. Moscow time on Saturday, according to Roscosmos, the Russian state corporation that runs the space program. Designed to land on the surface of Venus, Kosmos-482 may have remained intact during its plunge. It …

A robotic Soviet spacecraft has been adrift in space for 53 years. It will return to Earth later this week. Kosmos-482 launched in March 1972. If all had gone well, it would have landed on the sweltering surface of Venus and become the ninth of the uncrewed Soviet Venera missions to the planet. Instead, a rocket malfunction left it stranded …

The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is ready to enter a new arena: satellite internet. Amazon, the company that Mr. Bezos started as an online bookseller three decades ago, is now a merchandising behemoth, the owner of the James Bond franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets like Echo smart speakers and one of the …

The broadcast journalist Gayle King and the singer Katy Perry were set to make a brief trip into space on Monday on a flight operated by Jeff Bezos’ private company, Blue Origin. It would be the first time an all-female crew has been to space since 1963. Their flight, on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, was scheduled to take off …

Jonathan McDowell is a go-to expert for all things spaceflight. Thousands of subscribers read his monthly Space Report, and far more people have seen him on cable news and other media platforms explaining unexpected events in orbit. But that has always been his side gig: For 37 years, Dr. McDowell has been a specialist in X-ray astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian …

The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk has entered a new arena: satellite internet. Amazon, the company that Mr. Bezos started as an online bookseller three decades ago, is now a merchandising behemoth, the owner of the James Bond franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets like Echo smart speakers and one of the most powerful …

Four private astronauts ended a mission in a SpaceX vehicle on Friday by splashing down in waters near Oceanside, Calif. It was the first time the company had brought people back to Earth in the Pacific Ocean, after six years of its Dragon capsule splashing down off Florida in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. The Fram2 mission …

The engine shuddered to life around half past noon local time on Sunday, and with a guttural roar, the 92-foot-tall Spectrum rocket lifted slowly away from its launch tower, marking the first liftoff of its kind on the European continent. The rocket, launched by Isar Aerospace from within the Arctic Circle at a spaceport on the icy Norwegian island of …

Updated  March 17, 2025, 9:01 p.m. ET When the NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station in June, they expected to stay for maybe a few weeks. Instead, they’ve been up there for nine months. In a few hours, they will head home. Ms. Williams, Mr. Wilmore and two other astronauts will board a …

Four astronauts are hoping that Friday is the day that they’ll get to head to the International Space Station. They were all ready to go on Wednesday after putting on their spacesuits and boarding their SpaceX spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But with less than 45 minutes left in the countdown, SpaceX …