NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Science & Discovery
Without Jupiter's Gravity Assist, NASA Engineers Turn to Solar Electric Propulsion to Reach Uranus
A slipped launch window cost NASA's flagship Uranus mission its Jupiter gravity assist, so a new Planetary Science Journal paper swaps in solar electric propulsion to still reach the ice giant in about 13 years.
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Missions
Dragonfly Gets Its Nervous System, and Its Titan Landing Zone Finally Gets a Name
NASA's nuclear rotorcraft just got 17,315 feet of wiring installed at Johns Hopkins APL, and its 500-mile dune-field landing zone on Titan now has an official name: Ahmakiq Undae.
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Stargazing
NASA's September Skywatching Guide: Venus, the Teapot, and a Harvest Moon
NASA's September 2026 sky guide runs from a modest meteor shower and a string of Moon conjunctions to Venus's peak brilliance, the fall equinox, and a Harvest Moon sharing the evening with Saturn and Neptune.
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Science & Discovery
Roman Space Telescope Powers On Its Planet-Imaging Coronagraph
Days after launching on a Falcon Heavy, NASA's Roman Space Telescope switched on its Coronagraph Instrument on September 1, kicking off months of calibration before it attempts to directly image planets around nearby stars.
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Stargazing
September Sky: The Moon Crashes the Pleiades, Then Blots Out Jupiter
A waning gibbous Moon slides past the Pleiades this week, sets up a close pass with Jupiter on Sept. 6, then briefly occults the giant planet on Sept. 8 for skywatchers in Canada, the contiguous U.S., Greenland and Russia.
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Commercial
Sierra Space Books National Security Customers for Dream Chaser's First Flight
Sierra Space says its long-delayed Dream Chaser spaceplane will carry national security, civil and NASA cargo payloads together on one debut flight from Kennedy Space Center to Vandenberg.
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Missions
NASA, SpaceX Push Back Crew-13 Launch After Oxidizer Leak Found on Dragon
A propulsion-system oxidizer leak found during routine prelaunch processing has pushed Crew-13's ISS launch off its Sept. 12 target, with no new date set as NASA and SpaceX run tests and review data.
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NASA & Agencies
Meir and Adenot Step Outside for U.S. Spacewalk 99, the Sixth All-Female EVA in History
NASA's Jessica Meir and ESA's Sophie Adenot spent 6.5 hours outside the ISS on Sept. 1, 2026, swapping hardware on Harmony and the truss in the sixth all-female spacewalk ever flown.
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Missions
Roman Space Telescope Launches Toward L2, Kicking Off a Dark-Universe Survey 1,000 Times Faster Than Hubble
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on a Falcon Heavy Aug. 30, 2026, beginning a three-month cruise to L2 where its 300-megapixel camera will survey the sky 1,000x faster than Hubble in search of dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.
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Missions
The Pentagon Called It Its Most Spectacular Failure. NASA Just Launched the Wreckage Toward the Edge of the Universe — Under the Name of a Woman Astronomy Once Said Didn't Belong
A telescope built in secret to spy on adversaries, abandoned as a half-billion-dollar Cold War-style failure, launched August 30 to hunt dark energy — carrying the name of a woman denied a seat in the field it was denied a role in.
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Science & Discovery
Mars May Be Hiding a Molten Hot Spot Beneath Its South Pole
A gravity-based "tidal tomography" study in Nature finds the interior under Mars's south finds runs 200–400°C hotter than the north and may be partly molten, reshaping ideas about the planet's lopsided magnetism and ancient water.
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Military Space
Trump Signs Order to Create a U.S. Space Academy
A new executive order tasks a NASA-chaired commission with designing, in just 120 days, a federal academy meant to train engineers, operators, and future Space Force Guardians.
