NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Missions
Two Astronauts, One Stubborn Wrist: NASA's June 30 Spacewalk to Fix Canadarm2
On June 30, NASA's Chris Williams and Jessica Meir will step outside the ISS to swap a failed 91-kilogram wrist joint on Canadarm2, the robotic arm that drew elevated motor current and stopped responding on May 27.
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Missions
CRS-34 Dragon Heads Home With Bioprinted Tissue and Cancer-Research Cargo
SpaceX's CRS-34 Dragon undocked from the ISS on June 16 and splashed down off California early June 17, carrying thousands of pounds of finished experiments — bioprinted organ tissue, DNA-inspired cancer materials, cryogenic fuel data and more.
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Missions
What Artemis II Taught NASA: Real Orion Flight Data Now Shapes the Moon-to-Mars Blueprint
Real Orion flight data from Artemis II is now directly shaping NASA's Moon-to-Mars architecture, as engineers apply lessons from Johnson Space Center's Ion venue to systems that will define how humans reach the Moon — and eventually Mars.
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Missions
Pittsburgh's Moonshot: Astrobotic Unveils Griffin-1 Before Shipping NASA's 'Moon Base 2' Lander to JPL
Astrobotic unveiled its nearly complete Griffin-1 lunar lander — NASA's newly designated 'Moon Base 2' — in Pittsburgh on June 15-16, 2026, before shipping it to JPL for testing ahead of a Q4 2026 Falcon Heavy launch carrying the largest commercial payload ever sent to the Moon.
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Missions
Boeing and NASA Stay Committed to Starliner-1 While a Launch Date Remains Nowhere in Sight
NASA and Boeing reaffirmed their commitment to the Starliner-1 crewed ISS mission, but with no firm launch date set and infrastructure constraints mounting, the program's path forward remains deliberately vague.
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Missions
Voyager Space Moves to Acquire Astrobotic, Betting Big on Commercial Lunar Delivery at Scale
Voyager Space's acquisition of lunar lander company Astrobotic signals a new phase of consolidation in commercial space, as the CLPS contractor looks to scale up operations with deeper corporate backing.
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Missions
Astrobotic's Griffin-1 Lunar Lander Heads to California for Environmental Testing
Astrobotic has unveiled its Griffin-1 lunar lander and shipped it to California for environmental testing, marking a critical milestone in the company's Moon delivery ambitions.
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Missions
A Chinese University Is Building a $2.8 Million Spacecraft to Chase Asteroid Apophis
Tsinghua University students are developing START, a 200-kg spacecraft that will fly within 7 km of asteroid Apophis during its dramatic 2029 Earth flyby — on a budget smaller than most faculty buildings.
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Missions
Curiosity Rover Surveys Mysterious Geological Bands on Mars, Adding New Data to the Planet's Stratigraphic Record
NASA's Curiosity rover commits multiple sols to documenting mysterious geological band formations on Mars, while next-gen rover prototypes undergo desert testing on Earth.
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Missions
NASA's Lucy Catches a 155-Million-Year-Old Asteroid Tumbling Through Space Like a Cosmic Peanut
Lucy's flyby of asteroid Donaldjohanson reveals a bilobate, wobbling body born from ancient collision debris — and it's nothing like the near-Earth asteroids we've sampled before.
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Missions
NASA's ERNEST Rover Just Tore Through 16 Miles of California Desert — and It's Headed for the Moon
JPL's four-wheeled ERNEST prototype covered 16 miles in 37 hours during a March desert trial, moving an order of magnitude faster than any rover NASA has put on another world.
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Missions
Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, Compton: The Strategy Behind NASA's Great Observatories
Four telescopes, four wavelength bands, one coherent strategy. How NASA designed a multi-wavelength fleet — Hubble for visible and ultraviolet, Compton for gamma rays, Chandra for X-rays, Spitzer for infrared — that transformed astrophysics by revealing what no single observatory could see alone.
