New NASA administrator, citing China missions, calls for sustained support in Congress By William Harwood
May 19, 2021 / 7:48 PM / CBS News
Holding up a photo taken by China s new Mars lander, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson warned Congress on Wednesday that his agency faces increasingly stiff competition on the high frontier and that sustained funding for a new moon lander, infrastructure upgrades and other critical programs is vital for America s space program.
In his first congressional appearance since being confirmed by the Senate, Nelson, a former lawmaker who flew aboard a space shuttle in 1986, told a House appropriations subcommittee that China plans to send multiple landers to the south pole of the moon in the not-too-distant future, the same area NASA is targeting in its Artemis program.
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Massive moon rocket test firing aborted after early engine shutdown By William Harwood
Updated on: January 16, 2021 / 9:29 PM / CBS News
Engineers test fired the first stage of NASA s gargantuan Space Launch System rocket for the first time Saturday, but the planned eight-minute-long hot fire ended about a minute after ignition when one of the four main engines suddenly shut down.
What impact the abort at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi might have on NASA s plans to ship the booster to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for an unpiloted maiden test flight late this year is not yet known. We got lots of data that we re going to go through and . get to a point where we can make determinations as to whether or not launching in 2021 is a possibility or not, said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Huge NASA SLS rocket faces critical test firing before moon mission By William Harwood
January 15, 2021 / 6:59 PM / CBS News
A critical test firing Saturday of the four main engines powering the first stage of NASA s gargantuan Space Launch System moon rocket is the final major hurdle before the fully assembled booster s costly, oft-delayed launch late this year on an unpiloted test flight.
Bolted in place atop the massive B-2 test stand at NASA s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the upgraded Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines are scheduled to fire for a full eight minutes starting around 5 p.m. EST, the same duration needed for an actual flight.