NASA Selects Goddard Safety and Mission Assurance Contractor

NASA has selected ARES Technical Services of McLean, Virginia, to provide safety and mission assurance services at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Safety and Mission Assurance Services III contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with an estimated total value of $226 million. The contract will have […]

NASA to Launch Three Rockets from Alaska in Single Aurora Experiment

Three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms affect the behavior and composition of Earth’s far upper atmosphere.  The experiment’s outcome could upend a long-held theory about the aurora’s interaction with the thermosphere. It may also improve space […]

NASA Super Pressure Balloons Return to New Zealand for Test Flights

NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has returned to Wānaka, New Zealand, for two scheduled flights to test and qualify the agency’s super pressure balloon technology. These stadium-sized, heavy-lift balloons will travel the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes for planned missions of 100 days or more.  Launch operations are scheduled to begin in late March from Wānaka Airport, NASA’s […]

NASA Awards Launch Service Task Order for Mission to Study Storm Formation

NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace Inc. of Cedar Park, Texas, to provide the launch service for the agency’s Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS) mission, which aims to understand why, when, and where tropical convective storms form, and why some storms produce extreme weather. The mission will launch on the company’s Alpha rocket from NASA’s Wallops […]