SpaceX

Dozens gather on the lawn of the Kennedy Space Center press site to watch as a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off with NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now Hot on the heels of its successful mid-air booster catch during its Sunday Starship Flight 5 mission, SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center around lunchtime on Monday. Onboard the three-core vehicle was NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will embark on a year’s long expedition to Jupiter’s ocean moon, Europa. NASA believes this moon, characterized by its icy exterior and the ocean beneath it, may contain evidence suggesting that the building blocks for life might exist on another celestial body besides Earth. Europa Clipper was sent on an inter-planetary trajectory...

A stack of SpaceX Starlink satellites, which included the first six featuring Direct to Cell capabilities. The batch launched on the Starlink 7-9 mission, which lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Jan. 2, 2024. Image: SpaceX SpaceX completed a double launch day on Tuesday with a Starlink mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Starlink 9-7 mission occurred just a few hours after the Starlink 10-10 mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) occurred at 1:21 a.m. PDT (4:21 a.m. EDT, 0821 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1071 in the SpaceX fleet, flew for a 19th time. It previously support...

Super Heavy Booster 12 returns to the pad it launched from just seven minutes earlier. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now. In one of the most dramatic, high-risk space flights to date, SpaceX launched a gargantuan Super Heavy-Starship rocket on an unpiloted test flight Sunday and then used giant “mechazilla” robot arms on the pad gantry to pluck the returning first stage out of the sky in an unprecedented feat of engineering. The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, looped around the planet and re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean as planned, enduring temperatures nearing 3,000 degrees as it descended to a controlled, on-target splashdown. The spacecraft appeared to come through the hellish heat of re-entry in relatively good condition, protected by improved heat-shield tiles a...

SpaceX’s fully stacked Starship rocket stands atop the Orbital Launch Mount at Starbase in southern Texas. The Starship Flight 5 mission is poised to feature the first booster catch using the arms of the launch tower. Image: Will Robinson-Smith/Spaceflight Now Update 4:00 a.m. EDT: Because of poor weather off the coast of Florida, Crew Dragon Endeavour will not undock from the International Space Station on Sunday, Oct. 13. A new undocking date will be determined  SpaceX is preparing for the fifth test launch of its massive Starship rocket from southern Texas Sunday morning. The mission, dubbed Flight 5, is headlined by the intention to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy Booster for the first time. If all goes well during the initial ascent, the 71-meter-tall (232 ft.) booster will flip after ...

An artist’s rendering of the Hera spacecraft along with CubeSats Milani and Juventas around the asteroid, Dimorphous. Graphic: ESA The European Space Agency and SpaceX managed to find good enough weather right in the nick of time to launch a mission to a binary asteroid Monday morning. The Hera mission is a follow-on operation, which will examine Didymos and it moon, Dimorphos, after the latter was struck by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. “It’s been 18 years we’ve been working to put this mission together, so you can imagine our emotions, not only mine, but the whole team,” said Ian Carnelli, the Hera project manager, during a prelaunch media briefing. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 10:52 a.m. EDT (14...