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B-plane
The B-plane, also called the aiming or target plane, is a coordinate plane used in interplanetary navigation to target where a spacecraft passes a planet.
Baikonur
Baikonur (Байконур, Bayqongyr) is the common name for the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe, launch site of Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight in 1961.
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Baikonur Cosmodrome (Байқоңыр) is a spaceport in southern Kazakhstan leased and operated by Russia, and the launch site of Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight.
Ball Aerospace
Ball Aerospace, founded in Boulder, Colorado, in 1956, built spacecraft and instruments for NASA, including the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors, and was acquired by BAE Systems in 2024.
Ballistic capture
Ballistic capture is a spacecraft arrival technique in which a craft enters orbit around a target like the Moon or Mars without firing a braking maneuver.
Ballute
A ballute is an inflatable drag device, named from "balloon" and "parachute", that slows vehicles at hypersonic speeds where conventional parachutes are unsuitable; Goodyear coined the term in 1962.
Barbara Morgan
Barbara Morgan is an American teacher and retired NASA astronaut who trained as Christa McAuliffe's backup for the 1986 Challenger mission and flew aboard STS-118 in 2007.
Baykonur Cosmodrome Site 110
Baykonur Cosmodrome Site 110 is a two-pad launch complex at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, built in the 1960s for the N1 Moon rocket and later refurbished for Energia-Buran.
BDSBAS
BDSBAS (BeiDou Satellite-based Augmentation System) is China's satellite-based augmentation system, part of BeiDou, broadcasting corrections via geostationary satellites to improve navigation accuracy in China and surrounding areas.
BE-4
The BE-4 (Blue Engine 4) is a liquid oxygen and methane rocket engine developed by Blue Origin that powers ULA's Vulcan and Blue Origin's New Glenn rockets.
Beagle 2
Beagle 2 was a British Mars lander conceived by Colin Pillinger that lost contact after its 2003 landing and was found intact in 2015 images.
BeiDou
BeiDou, formally the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (北斗导航系统), is China's independently built and operated satellite navigation system, the third after GPS and GLONASS, providing global positioning, navigation, and timing services since 2020.
BeiDou B1C/B2a signals
B1C and B2a are the two modernized open-service civil signals of China's BeiDou-3 satellites, designed at 1575.42 MHz and 1176.45 MHz for interoperability with GPS and Galileo.
BeiDou-3
BeiDou-3 (北斗三号), also written BDS-3, is China's third-generation global satellite navigation constellation, completed in 2020 as the third independent global system after GPS and GLONASS.
BepiColombo
BepiColombo is a joint ESA and JAXA mission launched in 2018 to orbit Mercury with two spacecraft, ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mio, arriving in November 2026.
BeppoSAX
BeppoSAX was an Italian-Dutch X-ray astronomy satellite launched in 1996 and named for physicist Giuseppe Occhialini, best known for enabling the discovery of gamma-ray burst afterglows.
Berkut space suit
The Berkut (Беркут, "Golden Eagle") was the first Soviet spacesuit designed for spacewalks, worn by Aleksei Leonov during the first spacewalk outside Voskhod 2 on 18 March 1965.
Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow Aerospace was an American company in Las Vegas, founded by Robert Bigelow in 1999, that developed expandable space habitats, including the BEAM module on the ISS.
Bill Nelson
Bill Nelson, full name Clarence William Nelson II, is an American politician and former astronaut who was the 14th NASA administrator, serving from 2021 to 2025.
Billionaire space race
The billionaire space race is the competition between Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic over rockets, tourism, and contracts.
Biolab
Biolab is a European Space Agency biological research facility in the Columbus laboratory of the International Space Station, launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in February 2008.
BioSentinel
BioSentinel is a NASA CubeSat launched on Artemis I in 2022 to study deep space radiation effects on dried yeast, the first biological experiment beyond the Earth-Moon system.
Black Arrow
Black Arrow was a British three-stage satellite launch rocket developed from 1964 by the Royal Aircraft Establishment; in 1971 it made the United Kingdom the sixth nation to launch its own satellite.
Black Brant (rocket)
The Black Brant is a family of Canadian solid-propellant sounding rockets first launched in 1959, a workhorse of NASA's suborbital science program with a 98.5% reliability record.
Blagovest (satellite)
Blagovest (Благовест, "good news") is a series of four Russian military communications satellites built by ISS Reshetnev and launched on Proton-M rockets from Baikonur between 2017 and 2019.
Blok D
Blok D (Блок Д, "Block D") is a Soviet and Russian liquid-oxygen and kerosene rocket upper stage, developed in the early 1960s at OKB-1 under Sergei Korolev.
Blok L
Blok L was the fourth stage of the Soviet Molniya 8K78 rocket, igniting in orbit to send Luna, Venera, and Mars probes out of Earth orbit.
Blue Ghost Mission 1
Blue Ghost Mission 1 was a robotic lunar lander flown by Firefly Aerospace that landed in Mare Crisium in March 2025, the first fully successful commercial Moon landing.
Blue Ghost Mission 2
Blue Ghost Mission 2 is a planned Firefly Aerospace lunar mission under NASA's CLPS program, targeting the first American landing on the Moon's far side near Nassau crater.
Blue Moon (spacecraft)
Blue Moon is a family of lunar landers made by Blue Origin, unveiled in 2019 to deliver cargo and, in its Mark 2 version, crews to the Moon.