Tag: nasa

NASA is Trying to Bring Back This Amazing Supersonic Jet 

NASA is currently looking at bringing back the SR-71 Blackbird aircraft, first developed by Lockheed Martin in the 1960s.

This airplane travels at altitudes of more than 80,000 feet and can reach a speed of 2,200 miles per hour. The two pilots, who are the only passengers in the plane, must wear special space-type suits. It’s an amazing piece of engineering.

The plane was retired in the 1990s. No word yet on the reason for bringing it back.

The New York Post reports:

NASA mysteriously trying to pull world’s fastest plane, SR-71 Blackbird, out of retirement — and won’t say why

NASA appears to be pulling the fastest plane ever produced —the SR-71 Blackbird — out of retirement as the Trump administration suggested it’s working on a new generation of hypersonic surveillance jets.

Former NASA and Air Force engineers confirmed that they had been recently offered jobs to get an old Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird back in the air nearly 27-years after its last flight, Aviation Week reported.

Mike Relja, a former test engineer for the Blackbird — which is capable of reaching speeds of Mach 3.3, 2,200 mph — said NASA reached out to him last month to get the neglected plane up and running, but added that he was now too old for such a massive undertaking…

The aircraft, which debuted 59 years ago, still holds the achievement for fastest crewed jet-flight on public record.

At Mach 3.3, for example, it could fly from New York to Los Angeles in a little over an hour — compared to about 5 hours and 30 minutes for a commercial airliner.

Retired NASA employees also confirmed that other Blackbird engineers were contacted over the summer to do work on the jet.

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Mystery Deepens As Spy Aircraft Disappears From US Air Base Without Explanation

An SR-71 Blackbird parked for years on an outdoor display at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center is no longer visible in commercial satellite imagery, and the agency has offered no public explanation of where it went.

The spy aircraft, the NASA 844, has been absent from its pad since at least May 17, according to Aviation Week.

Sources told the publication that the plane was moved into a hangar earlier this year for an inspection, though NASA has not described what that inspection involves, why it is taking place, or how long it will last.

The Serial 61-7980 was the last SR-71 built and the last to fly, completing its final flight in 1999 after the Air Force had already retired the type and NASA had retained a few surviving airframes for high-speed research.

Lockheed Martin produced 32 of the reconnaissance aircraft, 12 of which were lost in accidents and none to enemy action.

Questions about the disappearance of the SR-71 come a week after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman discussed plans for a new high-altitude, high-speed X-plane and displayed images of silhouette that closely resembled a Blackbird at annual the All-In Summit in Los Angeles. 

“In the service of the first A [aeronautics] in NASA, we are rebuilding our X-plane fleet. The X-59 is researching quiet supersonic flight, but it’s just the beginning,” the NASA head told attendees.

“As NASA recommits to flight test and works alongside industry to push the boundaries of airframe and propulsion design, it will not be long before NASA once again is flying as high and as fast as we had in decades past, and then even more.”

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NASA teams up with NFL for Inspiration Tour with flyovers scheduled for football games

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Football League (NFL) have announced a collaboration featuring aircraft flyovers and astronaut appearances at select games.

“The agency will soon bring America’s strengths in space exploration and aeronautics innovation to the football field,” NASA said in a press release on Thursday, announcing its new Inspiration Tour.

So far, NASA participation is scheduled for the following games:

  • Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Atlanta Falcons in Pittsburgh on September 13th
  • Baltimore Ravens vs. New Orleans Saints in Baltimore on September 20th
  • Philadelphia Eagles vs. Los Angeles Rams in Philadelphia on October 4th
  • New York Jets vs. Cleveland Browns in East Rutherford, New Jersey on October 11th

More football game dates could be added, according to NASA.

The administration said that some of the games will experience flyovers showcasing NASA’s aircraft fleet, used for high-speed testing, high-altitude research, astronaut training and more.

“Regularly flying the aircraft maintains the health of the fleet and publicly demonstrates new technologies that may be applied to future commercial air travel,” NASA stated.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will lead the tour across the country in order to “connect the agency with the people, technologies, and organizations that drive American leadership in space.”

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Chinese Hackers Broke Into NASA, Federal Reserve, DOJ & Senate: FBI Announces

The United States Department of Justice has on Wednesday announced US authorities thwarted a major state-sponsored hack which saw a temporary intrusion into NASA, the Federal Reserve, Senate, the DOJ, Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human services, along with four unnamed companies in the US and South Korea.

“Today we announced the disruption of a global botnet and hacking platform used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to target U.S. critical infrastructure,” said FBI Director Kash Patel.

“These tools were used by PRC cyber actors to hide the origin of their attacks. Thanks to the work of FBI San Diego, FBI Cyber Division, and DOJ partners, we seized adversary infrastructure and shut these platforms down,” he added.

Domains utilized by two hacking platforms identified as “QScan” and “QTRouter” were seized by the DOJ in the large scale counter-cyberespionage operation.

Describing a pervasive botnet which was ultimately believed to be backed by Chinese state actors, The Wall Street Journal details that the “goal was to blend in with legitimate networking traffic, making the hacking activity hard to trace, federal officials say.”

“The group exploited software vulnerabilities to launch cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, power companies and hospital systems, and operated a worldwide network of hacked devices—known as a botnet—to conduct its hacking campaigns, according to Brett Leatherman, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top cyber official,” WSJ continues.

As for the specific allegation that this had state backing, the DOJ press release states:

People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored group known as “QTFY,” employed by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, created and operated QScan and QTRouter.

The DOJ announcement additionally outlines efforts at concealment and ‘plausible deniability’ in the following:

QTRouter consists of these compromised IoT devices, as well as commercial proxy service devices and leased virtual private servers. QTRouter then serves as an “obfuscation network” – meaning it allows QTFY and other malicious cyber actors to conceal the PRC-origin of their computer intrusion activities because the malicious communications appear to originate from computers (such as those compromised by QScan) that are outside of the PRC and may even be local to the targeted networks. Because the seized domains were hard-coded into both the QScan and QTRouter malware and used for essential tasks such as communication and authentication, the court-authorized seizures made QScan and QTRouter inoperable. 

Neither Beijing’s foreign ministry nor the Chinese embassy in Washington have officially responded to the allegations, and as has been the pattern in the past is likely to reject the US charge altogether.

Earlier this year Google was among those warning of imminent stepped-up Chinese and Russian targeting of US defense companies. 

Google’s prior report seemed to preview some of the techniques on display in this latest hack. The report cited observations of “more China-nexus cyber espionage missions directly targeting defense and aerospace industry than from any other state-sponsored actors over the last two years.”

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NASA reveals it has captured UFO imagery as space agency chief admits ‘there’s life everywhere’

NASA‘s chief administrator confirmed in a bombshell interview that the space agency has taken images of objects which can only be described as UFOs. 

Jared Isaacman, who took over as leader of NASA in December 2025, said real imagery captured from space could not be explained away as a comet or other natural phenomenon.

While Isaacman stopped short of calling it proof of alien life, he was confident that the ultimate conclusion would be that the universe is full of extraterrestrial life, which humans have not yet discovered.

The NASA Administrator told podcast host Jack Gordon: ‘We have captured imagery, and this is what President Trump is very forward-leaning about, that based on the data that we have within that imagery, we don’t know what it is.’

‘I think there’s a very real possibility we’re going to arrive at a conclusion in our lifetime that perhaps there’s life everywhere out there and that it isn’t as infrequent as we might think it to possibly be,’ he continued.

While Isaacman admitted the space agency was in possession of photos that appear to show unexplainable things near Earth, he added that he has never seen evidence of crashed UFOs or alien bodies recovered by the US government.

NASA has long maintained that it does not possess or maintain evidence any alien life or bodies, just as the White House and Pentagon have continuously stated that there is no physical proof.

However, Isaacman noted that NASA may already have the proof in its possession, but that evidence is currently stuck on Mars – roughly 200 million miles away right now.

‘We got samples on Mars right now. If we bring them back, there is a very high probability that they will point to, at some point, microbial life at least on Mars,’ he said during the June 30 interview with Gordon.

NASA had previously announced the discovery of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet last September, but the mission to collect those samples from the Perseverance rover was dropped from NASA’s Mars plans over funding issues.

The comments follow President Donald Trump’s order to disclose all files related to UFOs.

Thousands of pages of NASA records, audio interviews and photos have been released as part of the Pentagon’s disclosure rollout this year, but nothing to this point has provided definitive proof of life on other worlds. 

Isaacman was appointed to run NASA just before Congress approved a new budget, supported by President Donald Trump, which focused on sending a manned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.

The NASA administrator, who is a self-made billionaire entrepreneur, accomplished pilot and civilian astronaut who went into orbit with SpaceX, added that UFOs have been a key focus behind NASA’s renewed push to explore the solar system.

‘I can’t hate the subject. In fact, I’m incredibly fascinated about it because that is at the heart of what we’re trying to do at NASA – answer the question, are we alone?’

Despite saying that the universe is likely teeming with life, Isaacman pushed back when asked if humans would therefore be ‘invading’ other worlds by continuing to explore space now and in the distant future.

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NASA Just Flew a Human Kidney, and Transplant Medicine May Never Look the Same

A human kidney flew across NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., on June 5, and the real story begins with what didn’t happen. The organ wasn’t rushed into an operating room, as no surgeon scrubbed in while a family waited outside. From Space.com:

NASA is hoping to use drones to speed up organ delivery for transplant patients.

A flight test earlier this month at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia saw a drone pick up a kidney and fly it for the first time beyond “line of sight”, or the distance from which a drone is visible by an operator. Keeping a line of sight on a drone is a typical requirement for flight safety, but NASA is developing tools that may allow these machines to fly further away from operators in populated environments more regularly.

The kidney on the June 5 flight test was not viable for organ transplantation, which is why the agency and partner United Network for Organ Sharing were able to use it, according to WTKR. If all goes to plan with future tests conducted with NASA Langley, however, UNOS aims to fly organ-bearing drones as far as 15 miles (24 km), in between hospitals for example, to allow for swift and safe delivery to waiting patients. The drone collaboration was created to “explore faster, more reliable ways to transport donor organs using advanced aviation technologies”, according to space agency materials published in April.

Drones may have a better ability than larger aircraft to navigate ground logistics or maneuver in dense or hard-to-reach delivery areas. What’s more, drones might be able to do so faster than aircraft, which is crucial: organs can only last so long during transportation.

The test used additional radios on the drones intended to allow pilots to keep an eye on the drones even while out of sight. “What that means, more or less, is we’re going to have the pilot in command be about a mile away inside of a control room,” Kyle Smalling, an aerospace engineer at NASA Langley, told WAVY.com.

The kidneys used in the test had been donated for research after they were ruled out for transplant. Researchers still treated them like precious cargo because someday a flight like this may carry an organ that can save a life.

NASA Langley Research Center, the United Network for Organ Sharing, and LifeNet Health used a drone to transport human kidneys beyond visual line of sight. The flights lasted about 15 minutes, and researchers biopsied the kidneys and placed them on preservation pumps before and after the flights while tracking temperature, pressure, and altitude. Early results showed no evidence that the flights damaged the organs.

Mark Johnson, interim CEO of UNOS, called innovation in organ transportation essential because more than 100,000 people are waiting for lifesaving transplants. HRSA’s public organ donation data puts the national waiting list at 103,223 men, women, and children. Seventeen people die each day waiting, and another name is added every eight minutes.

Those numbers don’t leave much room for slow systems, missed handoffs, or traffic jams.

Transportation is one of the quiet pressures inside transplant medicine. A donor organ has a limited window of usefulness once recovered. Delays hurt organ function, affect outcomes, or stop a transplant from happening at all.

A kidney can travel by plane, ambulance, courier car, or handoff chain, but the weakest link often sits close to the ground, where congestion, routing, weather, and scheduling cost valuable time.

John Koelling, director of the Aeronautics Research Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center, said the project gives NASA a chance to apply Langley technology to a real-world problem that saves people waiting for transplants. The work uses NASA tools in flight planning, sensing, safety systems, and beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations.

Space-age language sounds distant, but the goal here is deeply human: get the organ where it needs to go with less delay and less risk.

The study also shows why serious medical progress frequently arrives in careful steps. Nobody should pretend drones will replace the transplant logistics network next week.

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NASA Ends Mars Mission 6 Months After Losing Communication With Spacecraft

After more than a decade of service, unlocking treasure troves of insights into Mars’s atmosphere, NASA announced on June 3 that its MAVEN mission has come to an end after a still unknown anomaly threw the spacecraft off course and drained its battery.

Short for “Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution,” NASA’s MAVEN mission launched in November 2013 to study the Red Planet’s atmosphere, specifically how it interacts with solar flares and other types of space weather, as well as readings of the dust storms. The mission was supposed to last one year, but the hardware continued to operate for another decade, providing insights crucial to sending a human crew there with the right protection in the future. It was also able to give ground systems early warning of incoming coronal ejecta from the sun.

“MAVEN has profoundly advanced our understanding of Mars’s atmosphere, climate history, and habitability, making it a cornerstone of NASA’s exploration of Mars for over 11 years,” Tiffany Morgan, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said during a press call. “MAVEN’s findings have helped shape future mission designs and have strengthened our understanding of Mars as a system.“

MAVEN additionally served a crucial communication role as part of NASA’s Mars Relay Network, working alongside the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other spacecraft to pass along priceless data collected by rovers on the Martian surface back to Earth. It was also recruited to help observe the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed through the solar system.

Mission leaders last heard from the spacecraft on Dec. 6, 2025, just before it made a routine pass behind the Red Planet – similar to how NASA lost signal with the Artemis II crew as they flew around the far side of the moon. Loss of signal was only supposed to last 30 minutes.

Mission leaders then explained that “a brief fragment of telemetry data” was able to be recovered by analyzing radio signals picked up by open-loop receivers on NASA’s Deep Space Network. That data showed the MAVEN spacecraft was in “safe mode” and caught in a spin when it emerged from behind Mars.

The spin indicated that there was a disruption in the spacecraft’s trajectory, and a review board concluded that the rotation caused batteries to drain, rendering it unrecoverable.

An anomaly review board was created in February to determine what happened to the spacecraft while it traveled around the far side of the planet. Mission leaders expected more questions to be answered in the coming months and declined multiple requests to share their own speculation of what happened.

As for MAVEN’s fate, NASA officials said that the spacecraft will continue to orbit Mars for 50 to 100 years

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Air Leak on International Space Station Triggers Evacuation Protocol – Astronauts Shelter in Dragon Capsule While Russian Cosmonauts Work To Seal Microscopic Structural Fractures

ISS air leak is back in the news.

We have been reporting here on TGP about the security threat to the International Space Station – an air leak in a Russian segment of the Station that was first discovered in 2019, was dealt with, but now has become a problem again.

Yesterday (5), work on the leak prompted astronauts to shelter in their ‘lifeboats’ (the Dragon Capsule), fearing an evacuation might be required.

The Telegraph reported:

“Nasa and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have been struggling to seal microscopic structural cracks in a transfer tunnel leading to the Russian Zvezda module since 2019.

At its peak, the leak was venting more than two pounds of air per day, but in recent months the astronauts thought they had the problem under control.”

Five members of the ISS crew to were ordered to shelter inside the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, while two Russian cosmonauts attempted to assess and repair the leak.

“’We are comfortable with backing out of the safe haven config’, astronauts were told from Houston. ‘With today’s operations, they wanted to be extra safe, extra precautionary, and have the crew move into the safe haven posture’, a Nasa spokesman later said.

A safe haven configuration is an emergency safety procedure where crew members retreat into their docked spacecraft to use them as ‘lifeboats’ that can immediately evacuate to Earth should the space station suffer a catastrophic failure.”

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