NASA announced Feb. 27 it selected Nicola Fox as the new associate administrator for science, effective immediately. Sandra Connelly, deputy associate administrator for science, had been serving as acting associate administrator since the departure at the end of December of Thomas Zurbuchen.

BROOMFIELD, Colo. — Japanese lunar lander developer ispace said Feb. 27 that its first mission remains on track to attempt a landing in two months as it makes progress on its next two missions.

SEOUL, South Korea — Japan’s space agency JAXA said Feb. 28 it had selected two astronaut candidates as part of efforts to support the NASA-led Artemis lunar exploration program.

The venture said it passed the European Space Agency’s Key Performance Gate 1 (KPG1) milestone at the end of 2022, or phase 1, to conclude the initial design phase for its servicer.

Speaking at the SpaceCom conference here Feb. 22, Bob Cabana, NASA associate administrator, said securing funding to support future Artemis missions and other agency priorities may be difficult given proposals in Congress to reduce overall federal spending.

In a Feb. 17 update, NASA and Boeing officials outlined the aerospace company’s work on its entry for NASA’s commercial crew program, and where the historic flight might fit into the space station’s busy manifest in upcoming months.

Icy particles of silica ejected from Saturn’s moon Enceladus are blasted out by heating at its frozen core as it is squashed and stretched by the gas giant’s tremendous gravity. 

NASA selected SpaceX in March 2020 for its first Gateway Logistics Services contract to transport cargo to and from the lunar Gateway. SpaceX will develop a version of its Dragon cargo spacecraft, called Dragon XL, that would launch on a Falcon Heavy to deliver several tons of cargo to Gateway and remove trash.

Construction and commissioning of the first launch station at Hainan Commercial Launch Site will be completed by the end of this year, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) stated Jan. 29.

Most of the people who converged on the Kennedy Space Center in mid-November for the third Artemis 1 launch attempt were focused on the giant Space Launch System rocket standing at Launch Complex 39B and the Orion spacecraft on top. Craig Hardgrove was thinking about something much smaller.

The Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the station on an eight-day mission, launching from Cape Canaveral and landing at White Sands, New Mexico. The mission, following a successful uncrewed flight to the ISS last May, is intended to be the final major test of the vehicle before NASA certifies it for use on ISS crew rotation missions.

HELSINKI — Launches conducted by commercial Chinese launch service providers could more than double those attempted last year, according to firms’ plans for 2023.

Being an astronaut is a tremendous commitment. Astronaut candidates — who tend to be selected in their 30s and 40s — usually leave prestigious careers for a chance at being an astronaut, starting again at the bottom of the rung. Training means long days at work and lots of travel. There’s also no guarantee they’ll make it into space.

Look out, everyone: There’s a new exoplanet in town.  An international team of researchers searching for transiting exoplanets (those that cross their host star’s face from our perspective) has made its latest discovery — an Earth-size body just 72 light-years away from us

A major solar flare erupted from the sun Saturday (Feb. 11), spawning a radio blackout for parts of Earth and setting the stage for more flares to come. 

The Polaris Program is a planned series of private crewed space missions organized by U.S. billionaire Jared Isaacman.