Nasa

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope reached Kennedy Space Center on June 21, arriving by barge at the Launch Complex 39 turn basin, the same channel that once floated Saturn V and Shuttle hardware to the pad. It’s now in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility being prepped for a Falcon Heavy launch no earlier than August 30, roughly eight months ahead of its original schedule. That last detail is rare enough for a flagship NASA mission to deserve its own headline. ...

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has spent nearly 22 years detecting gamma-ray bursts, X-ray transients, and ultraviolet afterglows from low Earth orbit. It’s one of the most productive space telescopes ever launched — over 1,600 gamma-ray bursts catalogued, thousands of follow-up observations forwarded to ground-based telescopes within seconds. And it’s falling. No later than Tuesday, a refrigerator-sized spacecraft built by a startup in nine months will ride the last Pegasus XL rocket ever launched in an attempt to grab Swift, lock onto its structure with three robotic arms, and push it back up. If it works, it’ll be the first time anyone has docked with a satellite that was never designed for servicing. ...

On May 26, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stood at agency headquarters in Washington and gave the lunar program something it hasn’t had before: a name with “base” in it. The program is called Moon Base. Three uncrewed landers are targeting the lunar south pole before the end of 2026. Behind them, $440 million in contracts for two crewed rovers. Behind that, a phased timeline stretching into the 2030s for power grids, hopping drones, and eventually semi-permanent crew presence. ...