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Impulse Space sees strong demand for GEO rideshare program

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NASA

Impulse Space sees strong demand for GEO rideshare program

SALT LAKE CITY — A year after announcing plans to offer rideshare missions to geostationary orbit, Impulse Space says the demand has been strong enough to plan an annual series of them. At last year’s Small Satellite Conference, Impulse Space said it would offer rideshare missions to GEO using its high-energy Helios orbital transfer vehicle under development. The company said it was prompted to offer the service by the number of “microGEO” spacecraft under development with masses of one ton or less. “We’re going to gauge the demand and see if it’s real,” Tom Mueller, founder and chief executive of Impulse Space, said at the time. A year later, Impulse has concluded the demand is real. “Twelve months ago, we got up here and we were saying that we think there is a market for GEO r...

ULA launches Vulcan rocket on first Space Force mission – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

ULA launches Vulcan rocket on first Space Force mission – Spaceflight Now

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket roared off the pad at Space Launch Complex 41 to begin the USSF-106 mission for the U.S. Space Force. This was the first national security launch using a Vulcan rocket and the 101st national security mission for ULA. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now United Launch Alliance fired off it’s first fully operational Vulcan rocket Tuesday, boosting two military satellites into space in the first Space Force-sanctioned flight of a new launcher that eventually will replace the company’s Atlas 5 and already-retired Deltas. Equipped with four solid-fuel strap-on boosters for additional takeoff power, the 198-foot-tall Vulcan’s two methane-fueled BE-4 engines thundered to life at 8:56p.m. EDT, instantly propelling the rocket away from pad 41 at the Cape Cana...

Crew 10 returns to Earth with Pacific Ocean splashdown – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

Crew 10 returns to Earth with Pacific Ocean splashdown – Spaceflight Now

The SpaceX Dragon Endurance splashes down in the waters of the Pacific Ocean near the coast of San Diego, California. Image: NASA Two NASA astronauts, a Japanese flier and a Russian cosmonaut plunged back to Earth Saturday, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego to wrap up a five-month mission. Strapped into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance, commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov gently splashed down in calm seas at 11:33 a.m. EDT, 17-and-a-half hours after undocking from the International Space Station. SpaceX support crews deployed near the landing site quickly converged on the capsule to rig the craft for a lift onto the deck of a recovery ship. After hatch opening, the station fliers were helped out of ...

Oddly viscous stars could be impersonating black holes

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Science

Oddly viscous stars could be impersonating black holes

Is that gravitational wave signal coming from a black hole, or something even stranger?titoOnz / Alamy Exotic viscous stars could reflect ripples of space-time, mimicking the signals we observe from black holes. Since 2015, researchers have been learning how to see the contents of the universe by tracking not just light waves but also gravitational waves: ripples in the fabric of the universe. Jaime Redondo–Yuste at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark and his colleagues have now shown that, like waves of light, gravitational waves can be reflected – but only off odd stars with an unusually viscous texture. The researchers started by questioning whether a mirror for gravitational waves could even exist. Although some past studies suggested it could, they struggled ...

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 Mission Returns, Splashes Down Off California

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SpaceX

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 Mission Returns, Splashes Down Off California

Editor’s Note: This release was edited Aug. 9, 2025, to update the International Space Station docking port for the Crew-10 mission. The first crew to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program completed the agency’s 10th commercial crew rotation mission to the International Space Station on Saturday. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov returned to Earth at 11:33 a.m. EDT. Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels retrieved the spacecraft and its crew. After returning to shore, the crew will fly to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and reunite with their families. “Splashdown! Crew-10 is back on Earth from the Inte...