A day after landing on the moon, the robotic Athena spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines of Houston is dead. In an update on its website on Friday, the company confirmed that Athena had tipped onto its side — the same fate that befell its first lunar lander, Odysseus, last year. With its solar panels unable…
Athena didn’t crash. But what did happen to it? Hours after the 15-foot-tall robotic spacecraft arrived at the moon’s surface, closer to the lunar south pole than any spacecraft has been, it remained unclear whether its touchdown was smooth enough to perform its intended work, or if it toppled over in the process, potentially limiting…
NASA is aiming to send astronauts back to the moon, because that is what President Trump set as the destination of the agency’s human spaceflight program during his first term. On Dec. 11, 2017, Mr. Trump signed what the White House called Space Policy Directive 1, which stated that “the United States will lead the…
March 6, 2025, 9:45 a.m. ET Odysseus captured this image about 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site last year.Credit…Intuitive Machines Odysseus, Intuitive Machines’ first lander, landed on the moon in February 2024. But not perfectly. The spacecraft was almost doomed before it even left Earth. Safety switches on laser…
The moon will be a busy place this year. There are three robotic spacecraft in space right now that are aiming to set down on the moon’s surface. The first of those to arrive — the Blue Ghost lunar lander, built by Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas — will attempt to land early Sunday. When…
The moon is not bone dry, scientists now know. But how many drops of water will thirsty astronauts find? No one knows for sure. A robotic NASA spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer, which launched Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is aiming to provide a detailed map from orbit of the abundance, distribution and…
Intuitive Machines landed a robot on the moon last year. Can the Houston company do it again, but keep the spacecraft upright this time? When the spacecraft, named Odysseus, set down on the moon last February, it managed to communicate with Earth even though it had toppled on its side. It was the first commercially…
Astronomers have been carefully watching 2024 YR4, a space rock with a heightened chance of hitting Earth in 2032. But fear not: NASA announced on Monday that it posed a threat no longer — the odds that the asteroid would smash into our planet have dropped to nearly zero. “I knew this was likely to…
With TV cameras pointed at her, Felisa Wolfe-Simon began speaking at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2, 2010. “I’ve discovered — I’ve led a team that has discovered — something that I’ve been thinking about for many years,” Dr. Wolfe-Simon said. She was at that time a visiting researcher with the U.S. Geological…
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, is an independent, 162-year-old nongovernmental agency tasked with investigating and reporting on a wide range of subjects. In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion — collectively known as D.E.I. — have been central to its agenda. But the Academies’ priorities changed abruptly on Jan. 31….