When your entire landing sequence is shorter than the time the radio signal travels from Mars to the Earth, InSight's handlers suffered through "seven minutes of terror" until they could celebrate the success of landing on Mars.

A single ping was all it took to send mission control into a engineering party celebration that welcomed the newest explorer to the surface of Mars.

Parker Solar Probe is alive and well after skimming by the Sun at just 15 million miles from our star's surface. This is far closer than any spacecraft has ever gone — the previous record was set by Helios B in 1976 and broken by Parker on Oct. 29, 2018 — and this maneuver has exposed the spacecraft to intense heat and solar radiation in a complex solar wind environment.

At its closest approach on Nov. 5, called perihelion, Parker Solar Probe reached a top speed of 213,200 miles per hour, setting a new record for spacecraft speed.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, about the size of a small car, will travel directly into our Sun's atmosphere about 4 million miles from the star's surface, closer than any manmade object has ever come to our home star. The historic mission that will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun is scheduled to launch on Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018.

At closest approach, the Parker Solar Probe will travel around the Sun at approximately 430,000 mph (700,000 kph). That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in one second.

 

Explosives were used to bring down two aging launch towers of Complex 17 at Cape Canaveral to prepare for spaceflight startup Moon Express' new launch complex.

The site helped launch some incredibly important missions for NASA, including a trio of Mars rovers, countless satellites, and several orbiters that visited planets in our solar system.

Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft arrived at asteroid Ryugu Wednesday after a 3½-year journey to blow a crater in the rocky surface, collect samples and bring them back to Earth.

If the retrieval and the return journey are successful, the asteroid material could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth.