Space

On August 31, 1965, NASA’s Super Guppy cargo plane took its first test flight. This oversized aircraft looks a bit like a giant flying whale. It was built by a company called Aero Spacelines and based on the Boeing B-377 Stratocruiser. NASA uses these funny-looking planes to transport large cargo, like spacecraft parts and other smaller aircraft. (See the Super Guppy swallow a T-38…

On Aug. 28, 1993, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid Ida while on its way to Jupiter. Galileo was the first spacecraft to fly by an asteroid in the asteroid belt. Ida was actually the second one it visited after another flyby of the asteroid Gaspra in 1991. Galileo whizzed by asteroid Ida going almost 28,000 mph and came within 1,500 miles of the asteroid’s surface. During…

The hours are counting down to the launch of NASA’s newest flagship orbital observatory. The spacecraft recently got its last glimpse of terrestrial light before being encapsulated in its rocket’s protective payload fairing last week and is imminently bound for liftoff. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s next-generation research satellite, and it’s currently…

NASA is just days away from launching its next major space observatory. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to lift off Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, heading for a spot roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, which trades panoramic views for a narrow field of view to peer…