NASA and Partners Revise Human Lander Designs for 2028 Moon Missions
NASA and commercial human landing system providers Blue Origin and SpaceX have streamlined the designs and changed operations concepts for future crewed lunar landers to support a 2028 lunar surface return. Artemis landers and Orion will now rendezvous in orbits informed by each partner system rather than a near-rectilinear halo orbit. SpaceX plans an in-space propellant aggregation approach in low Earth orbit, while Blue Origin will use three transfer stages to send its Mark 2 Alpha Lander to an elliptical polar orbit. Both providers added development milestones to reduce risk and enhance astronaut safety.
Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Concludes Science Operations
NASA has concluded operations for the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the spacecraft sank below an orbital altitude of 171 miles due to increased atmospheric drag from recent solar activity. The observatory entered safe mode on October 20 when it could no longer compensate for the drag, prompting the operations team to command an end to operations. The spacecraft is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in the coming weeks, leaving behind an archive of multiwavelength observations spanning nearly 22 years.
Dragonfly Rotorcraft Completes First Real-Time Simulated Flight Test
Engineers on a computer testbed at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory successfully executed a real-time simulated first flight for NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft using flight-like avionics. The test incorporated navigation cameras, inertial measurement units, and a lidar system to simulate terrain measurements and hazard identification for the mission to Saturn's moon Titan. While scheduled for a 2028 launch, the test validated how the rotorcraft systems interact on flight-like hardware to prepare for autonomous operations on Titan.
Written with AI from original reports. Source names and report dates are shown with each story.
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