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• Jeff Foust
NASA is evaluating whether an engineering model of a Mars rover can be converted into a lunar rover, but a reported cost estimate above $1 billion has drawn a rejection from the agency’s leader. The dispute highlights the financial stakes of reusing existing spacecraft hardware for new planetary missions.
NASA
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NASA is evaluating whether an engineering model of a Mars rover can be converted into a lunar rover, but a reported cost estimate above $1 billion has drawn a rejection from the agency’s leader. The dispute highlights the financial stakes of reusing existing spacecraft hardware for new planetary missions.
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NASA and Blue Origin have agreed to test New Glenn engines at NASA’s historic Stennis Space Center stand, giving the company an alternative to capacity constrained by the May static-fire explosion at Launch Complex 36 as it works toward a return to flight before the end of 2026.
NASA continues to assess flight opportunities for Starliner-1 as work with Boeing on the CST-100 vehicle advances. A NASA official characterized progress as “good” but declined to provide a target launch date, leaving the timing of the program’s next uncrewed mission unresolved.
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An examination of the Columbia space shuttle disaster argues that the failures behind the tragedy were not unique to a single mission. The same weaknesses can persist across aerospace operations, from maintenance hangars to flight decks, making organizational discipline and safety oversight as critical as technical performance.
Wisk Aero and NASA completed a simulation of multi-aircraft autonomous flight operations in controlled airspace, testing how autonomous aircraft could operate together within existing airspace-management environments. The exercise advances Wisk’s development of autonomous aviation systems and provides NASA with additional data on future airspace integration.
NASA says its next flagship space telescope, the Roman Space Telescope, is on track for a late-August launch—about nine months ahead of its previous schedule. The update signals progress on remaining development and readiness milestones for the mission.
A spacecraft tasked with raising NASA’s Swift Observatory to a higher orbit suffered a malfunction and began tumbling several days ago. Engineers believe recovery remains possible, even as the setback complicates plans to achieve the observatory’s target orbit.
NASA says the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The observatory will travel nearly 1 million miles from Earth to reach the same orbital “sweet spot” as the James Webb Space Telescope, enabling wide-field science aimed at discoveries currently impossible from existing assets.
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