SpaceX is upgrading Starship’s heat shield with new tiles that are twice as strong as the previous version used during the flight 4 test. SpaceX is adingd an ablative secondary structure behind the ...

SpaceX fitted metal tiles on Starship’s exterior only to see them oxidize rapidly during reentry, turning streaks of stainless steel into rusty orange — a sign the tiles couldn’t handle the ...

NASA's new spaceship of the future must endure searing temperatures capable of melting iron, steel or chromium as the spacecraft streaks into the Earth's atmosphere on the way back from the moon.

NASA officials declared the Artemis I mission successful in late 2022, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment. The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft performed nearly flawlessly on ...

Two years ago next week, NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean to wrap up what, at first glance, seemed to be a highly successful unpiloted test flight that made a return to the ...

Hawthorne, CA (February 20, 2009) – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) announces the passing of a significant technical milestone in the development of its Dragon spacecraft with the ...

The world of aerospace increasingly relies on carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites to build the structures of satellites, rockets and jet aircraft. But the life of those materials is limited by ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The heat shield for NASA's upcoming Mars rover suffered a fracture during testing recently, but ...

The heat shield for NASA's next Mars spacecraft just cracked open. Luckily, engineers found this out during testing here on Earth, long before the Mars 2020 rover mission leaves for the Red Planet in ...

A critical part of NASA's next $2 billion rover mission to Mars broke during testing earlier this month. The Mars 2020 mission's heat shield was undergoing stress-testing when it developed a crack ...