Seven astronauts lost their lives during the Challenger space shuttle disaster on Jan. 28, 1986. SPACE reports that four decades later, human spaceflight remains difficult, “despite progress in ‘lessons learned.’”
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Tag: Spaceflight
AIAA Educator Associate Member Conducts Experiments on Blue Origin Spaceflight
FROM THE INSTITUTE
On 31 May 2025, Blue Origin completed its 12th human spaceflight and the 32nd flight for the New Shepard program. The crew included middle and high school teacher, and AIAA Educator Associate Member, Aymette “Amy” Medina Jorge from Odyssey Academy in Galveston, Texas. Born in Puerto Rico, Amy is passionate about boosting Hispanic representation in STEM fields. She is a recipient of the 2023 AIAA and Challenger Center Trailblazing STEM Educator Award.
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Trailblazing STEM Educator Amy Medina Jorge Completes Spaceflight on Blue Origin’s NS-32 Mission
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 31, 2025 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) issued the following statement from AIAA CEO Clay Mowry:
“Congratulations to Amy Medina Jorge on her journey beyond the Kármán line! We are thrilled to see such a remarkable educator-astronaut make the journey of a lifetime as part of Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-32 mission. Amy is one of those teachers who literally goes above and beyond to inspire the next generation of explorers and innovators.
We were honored to recognize Amy in 2023 with the Trailblazing STEM Educator Award in partnership with Challenger Center. Amy stood out due to her tireless work every day to empower students in STEM – especially those who are traditionally underserved and underrepresented. She’s given her students the chance to participate in real space experiences, leading more than 60 space experiments including developing and flying biometric sensors and performing in-flight 3D printing on a parabolic zero-gravity flight.
As a middle and high school teacher at Odyssey Academy Galveston, in Galveston, Texas, Amy is also an AIAA Educator Associate Member. Teachers like Amy are invaluable – not only to their local communities but to the space community as a whole.
Amy’s lessons are launchpads for her students’ dreams, giving them every opportunity to see their potential. Certainly, her students’ dreams were onboard with her today. What an inspiration!
AIAA applauds Blue Origin on continuing to open up access to space to more people, totaling nearly 60 commercial astronauts so far. We salute the countless aerospace professionals whose expertise has brought the New Shepard fully reusable, suborbital rocket system to this point. Reusability is the future of launch.”
Media Contact: Rebecca Gray, [email protected], 804-397-5270 cell
About AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. Visit www.aiaa.org, and follow AIAA on X/Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Space Force’s Secretive X-37B Space Plane Surpasses 1 Year in Orbit
SPACE reports, “In case you forgot it was still up there. That U.S. Space Force X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-7) has silently slipped past one-year of flight time. The craft is engaged in performing aerobrake maneuvers, a technique to alter its orbit around Earth, as well as safely dispose of its attached service module.
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SpaceX Starship Booster Caught by Launch Gantry During Landing
Aviation Week reports, “A SpaceX Super Heavy booster flew itself back to its Boca Chica Beach, Texas, launchpad where it was caught by a pair of mechanical arms on the gantry 7 min. after liftoff, nailing one of the primary goals of the fifth Starship-Super Heavy integrated flight test (IFT-5).”
Full Story (Aviation Week)
More Info (AIAA Statement)
Space Force to Test New Orbit-Switching Maneuver on X-37B Space Plane
Defense One reports, “A U.S. X-37B space plane is slated to test a new way of rapidly changing its orbit, part of the Space Force’s quest for fuel-sipping maneuverability. The spacecraft will experiment with aerobraking, which uses Earth’s atmosphere to slow down and switch orbits. “The use of the aerobraking maneuver—a series of passes using the drag of Earth’s atmosphere—enables the spacecraft to change orbits while expending minimal fuel,” the service said in a release today.”
Full Story (Defense One)
X-37B Lands at Kennedy Space Center after Spending 908 Days in Orbit
Aviation Week reported behind a paywall that the US Space Force “landed the X-37B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 12, completing a 908-day mission that set a new record for endurance while performing several classified and unclassified missions.” Space News reported that this was the “sixth mission of the crewless reusable plane, built by Boeing and jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.” On this mission, the “X-37B carried several U.S. military and NASA science experiments, including a Naval Research Laboratory project to capture sunlight and convert it into direct current electrical energy, and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat-8, which remains in orbit. One of NASA’s experiments was the Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space. Scientists will use the data to understand the effects of the space environment on different types of materials. Another experiment was to investigate the effects of long-duration space exposure on seeds.”
Full Story (Aviation Week); More Info (Space News)
US Military’s X-37B Space Plane in Orbit for 900+ Days
SPACE reported, “The U.S. military’s X-37B robotic space plane just passed 900 days in orbit on its latest hush-hush mission, adding to the program’s flight-duration record.” The space plane launched in May 2020 and does not yet have a return date. The mission is the sixth of the X-37B; thus, it is known as Orbital Test Vehicle 6 (OTV-6) and is the first X-37B flight “to use a service module to host experiments.”
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X-37B Sets New Spaceflight Record
SPACE reports that as of Thursday, the X-37B uncrewed space plane “has been in Earth orbit for 781 days, breaking its previous record of 780. The reusable vehicle designed and built by Boeing is currently flying on its sixth mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 or OTV-6, which launched on May 17, 2020.” The X-37B’s current mission “includes several classified payloads, but some of its on-board experiments have been made public,” such as the US Naval Research Laboratory’s Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module (PRAM), the US Air Force Academy-designed FalconSat-8 satellite, and “two NASA experiments designed to test the effects of radiation on plant seeds and assess the effects of space on various materials.”
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