On Thursday morning, at a time when most people in the United States were sleeping, Jeff Bezos’ space company sent its first rocket into orbit. At 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force…
On Thursday morning, at a time when most people in the United States were sleeping, Jeff Bezos’ space company sent its first rocket into orbit. At 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force…
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is poised upright at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Preparations began in earnest several hours before launch when liquid hydrogen started flowing into New Glenn’s propellant tanks. At 10 minutes before liftoff time, the launch director will conduct a “go poll,” asking people whether…
A space twofer is scheduled to take place early Wednesday morning — two lunar missions for the price of one rocket launch. A SpaceX Falcon 9 will lift off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying the Blue Ghost lander built by Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas, and the Resilience lander from…
For thousands of years, Cardea has been known as the Roman goddess of doorways and transitions, a guardian of thresholds. On Monday, she joined the celestial ranks of fellow mythological figures like Mars, Venus and Andromeda. But Cardea is not a planet or a constellation. She is as a quasi-moon — a very-real type of…
The first full moon of the year will glide through the sky on Monday night. For lucky stargazers in some parts of the world, it will also pass in front of the more-brilliantly-red-than-usual Mars in an event known as a lunar occultation. But that’s not all January’s sky has to offer. A new comet, expected…
Jan. 12, 2025, 11:30 p.m. ET Kenneth Chang Kenneth Chang is reporting on the launch from Cocoa Beach, Fla. When upright, the New Glenn is 320 feet tall. At liftoff, nearly four million pounds of thrust spew from its seven booster engines. But it is not the largest rocket.Credit…Blue Origin In many ways, New Glenn…
The foundational building block for Jeff Bezos’ space dreams is finally ready to launch. A New Glenn rocket — built by Blue Origin, the rocket company that Mr. Bezos started nearly a quarter century ago — is sitting on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It is as tall as a…
Some 4.5 billion years ago, the dwarf planet Pluto was suddenly joined by a companion. For a very brief period — perhaps only hours — they danced as if arm in arm before gently separating, a grand do-si-do that resulted in Pluto and its quintet of moons orbiting the sun together today. Astronomers have long…
NASA needs help fetching rocks from Mars, and on Tuesday, agency officials announced that they have not yet quite decided how to do that. Instead, they are leaving a final decision to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump. But the officials said they had figured out how to potentially launch the mission and…