Orion Spacecraft

The Artemis II mission, which will return US astronauts to lunar space, has run into problems that have critics demanding NASA remove the crew from the flight for safety reasons. The bigger question is, why do we have astronauts at all?

The release of NASA's latest budget reveals the Orion spacecraft and Lunar Gateway space station are getting the chop. The US$18.8-billion total figure decreases spending by $6 billion, or 24%, as the space agency increases funding for crewed Moon and Mars missions.

NASA's Artemis 1 deep-space mission reached a major goal today as the uncrewed spacecraft successfully completed its powered flyby of the Moon that brought it within 81 miles (130 km) of the lunar surface.

It's another return to the drawing board for NASA scientists and engineers working on the Artemis I mission, which was due to lift off on Saturday until a hydrogen leak led to a last-minute scrubbing.

When NASA's Artemis spacecraft lifts off on its uncrewed circumlunar mission this year, it will have its own voice-activated Alexa digital assistant and Webex video conference technology aboard installed in a Lockheed Martin demo pack called Callisto.

NASA and ESA have formally entered into a partnership agreement for building NASA's Artemis Gateway deep space outpost. The agreement signed on Tuesday is part of the US effort to attract international partners for the lunar exploration project.

NASA has put a key component of its Orion deep-space probe through its paces, conducting a static firing of the main engine. The purpose of the 12-minute test of the qualification version of the propulsion system was to demonstrate its ability to return the capsule safely to Earth in an emergency.

Lockheed Martin says that it has completed the final assembly phase​ of the first full Orion spacecraft. At a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, US Vice President Mike Pence made the public announcement at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

The European Service Module for the 25-day unmanned Exploration Mission-1 Orion mission in June 2020 has completed final system integration at the Airbus facility in Bremen, Germany after technicians installed the last radiator unit.

Lockheed Martin says its technicians at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans have finished work on the inner capsule or pressure vessel of the Orion Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) spacecraft, which is now at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The US Navy has completed the latest in a series of sea trials to work out the bugs of recovering NASA's Orion space capsule after its end of mission splashdown. The USS Anchorage (LPD 23) completed Underway Recovery Test-6 (URT-6) on January 23.

Lockheed Martin is recycling a Space Shuttle cargo container to create a prototype deep space habitat for NASA. The full-scale experimental module will be used to test technologies to provide astronauts with a safe living space that can operate autonomously when there is no one on board.