NASA Valley

The Artemis II astronauts check out their ride to the Moon, practicing post-splashdown recovery operations for Artemis II, and the Webb Space Telescope checks out a record-breaking star … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket carrying NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, lifts off from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand, June 28 at 5:55 a.m. EDT. The CAPSTONE mission is owned and operated by Advanced Space of Westminster, Colorado, on behalf of NASA. The microwave-oven sized CubeSat – which was designed and built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, a Terran Orbital Corporation – is set to be the first spacecraft to test a unique lunar orbit intended for NASA’s Gateway, the future lunar outpost for the Artemis missions.

OSIRIS-REx launched Thursday, September 8 at 7:05PM on an Atlas V rocket on a journey to study asteroid Bennu and return a sample to Earth. Thousands of visitors watched the launch, some of whom were part of a NASA Social event.

Rocket launch by NASA

Inside an environmentally controlled shipping container, the Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft's pressurized cargo module (PCM) for the company's 20th commercial resupplky mission for NASA arrives at the Kennedy Space Center