Sources: Space
NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars finds a rock containing spotted features which are possible fossilized records of microbes, though non-biological processes cannot yet be ruled out. 2024-07-25
NASA cancels its lunar water-seeking rover mission with the VIPER rover, citing cost overruns and launch delays, after spending $450 million on the project. 2024-07-17
Unknown astronomical object 2020 SO makes its closest approach to Earth at a perigee distance of approximately 0.13 lunar distances (50,000 km; 31,000 mi). Researchers, who discovered 2020 SO on September 17, 2020, are still unsure whether the object is a small near-Earth asteroid or an artificial object. The booster of Surveyor 2's Atlas-Centaur rocket, launched by NASA in 1966, is suspected by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 2020-12-1
NASA reports that it has detected a huge meteor explosion in Earth's atmosphere on December 18, 2018, above Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. The explosion went largely unnoticed due to its location. The explosion, which was ten times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was the second largest of its kind in 30 years. 2019-03-18
NASA announces that "Voyager 2" entered into the interstellar medium after exiting the heliosphere on November 5. 2018-12-10
NASA's "Opportunity" rover is temporarily shut down due to a dust storm. 2018-06-11
SpaceX launches a NASA cargo run to the International Space Station, and in a spaceflight first, successfully lands its reusable main-stage booster on an autonomous spaceport drone ship. 2016-04-8
The Soyuz TMA-19M, consisting of Expedition 46 crew members Yuri Malenchenko (RSA), Timothy Kopra (NASA) and Tim Peake (ESA), launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the International Space Station (ISS) with Peake becoming the first Briton to represent the European Space Agency at the ISS. 2015-12-15
NASA observes the asteroid YU 55 as it makes a close Earth flyby, passing within 0.85 lunar distances (about 201,700 miles) of the Earth. YU 55 is approximately 400 m across, and is the largest asteroid to make a close pass since 1976. 2011-11-8
NASA delays the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-133, its final mission, due to a circuitry glitch. 2010-11-2