Spaceflight Now reports, “Sierra Space is getting one step closer to finally seeing its Dream Chaser spaceplane reach the launch pad. The spacecraft completed its environmental testing at NASA’s Armstrong Test Facility last week … Sierra Space is now preparing to load up Dream Chaser and Shooting Star for shipment down to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Once it arrives, teams will finish adding the thermal protection tiles and perform additional checkouts, like acoustic testing.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Tag: journey
NASA Spacecraft Continues its 17-Year Journey
The Washington Post reports that for nearly 17 years, NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A spacecraft “drifted through space on a lonely mission.” It traveled “around the sun far ahead of Earth, conducting groundbreaking research on the solar system’s star.” Like many NASA spacecraft, STEREO-A “outlived its mission life span of two years.” Instead, it “traveled further and further away from Earth on a journey that became fraught with uncertainty as it passed behind the sun in 2015, temporarily severing contact with NASA.” The same year, the agency “lost contact with STEREO-A’s sibling vessel, STEREO-B, which was traveling a similar path.” But STEREO-A kept going. And its orbital trajectory “around the sun meant that it had a chance to do what very few other NASA spacecraft could: eventually make its way back toward home.”
Full Story (Washington Post)
Durand Lecture Highlights 30-Year Journey Deploying Autonomous Drones to Understand Tornadoes
As a child growing up in Oklahoma, Brian Argrow had two passions: meteorology and aerospace engineering. He never imagined one day he would combine both interests — deploying tornado-chasing drones that showed how tornadoes form, key to increasing warning times. On Monday, Argrow, Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, delivered the 2026 Durand Lecture for Public Service.