NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told NPR he sees the U.S. in an urgent race with China to find water on the moon, and that he trusts SpaceX, despite Elon Musk's increasingly controversial profile.
Edward J. Dwight Jr. is set to be on the next Blue Origin rocket into space. The rare opportunity comes more than six decades after he was passed over to become a NASA astronaut.
Few humans have had the opportunity to see Earth from space, much less live in space. We got to talk to one of these lucky people — NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara. She will soon conclude her nearly seven month stay on the International Space Station.
Transmitting from space to your ears, Loral talks to host Regina G. Barber about her dreams in microgravity, and her research on the ISS: 3D-printing human heart tissue, how the human brain and body adapt to microgravity, and how space changes the immune systems of plants.
Have questions you want us to send to outers pace? Email us at shortwave@npr.org!
Tom Stafford commanded the first Apollo mission to dock with a Soviet craft in space. He also served as commander of Apollo 10 - the dress rehearsal before NASA's first landing on the moon in 1969.
The four crewmembers spent a half-year on the International Space Station conducting dozens of experiments and science research. NASA's Crew-8 mission relieved them on the orbital outpost last week.
Voyager 1 has been traveling through space since 1977, and some scientists hoped it could keep sending back science data for 50 years. But a serious glitch has put that milestone in jeopardy.
The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest human-made object in space. It launched in 1977 with a golden record on board that carried assorted sounds of our home planet: greetings in many different languages, dogs barking, and the sound of two people kissing, to name but a few examples. The idea with this record was that someday, Voyager 1 might be our emissary to alien life – an audible time capsule of Earth's beings. Since its launch, it also managed to complete missions to Jupiter and Saturn. In 2012, it crossed into interstellar space.
But a few months ago, the probe encountered a problem. "It's an elderly spacecraft," says NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce, "and it had some kind of electronic stroke." Greenfieldboyce talks to Short Wave Host Regina G. Barber about the precarious status of Voyager 1 – the glitch threatening its mission, and the increasingly risky measures NASA is taking to try and restore it.
What interstellar adventure should we cover next? Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.
Three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut will spend about six months on the International Space Station - conducting experiments and research. They'll relieve four people of the Crew-7 mission.
Navy Capt. Victor Glover, who spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station, will be among four astronauts to venture back to the moon for the first time since 1972.
Intuitive Machines, the company that built and flew the spacecraft, said it will continue to collect data until sunlight no longer shines on the solar panels, expected to happen Tuesday morning.
Odysseus — the first U.S. lander in over 50 years — tipped over at touchdown and ended up on its side near the moon's south pole, hampering communications, Intuitive Machines officials said Friday.
