SpaceX

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...

By thirty-seven seconds after liftoff, it was clear one of two strap-on solid fuel boostersvwas suffered an anomaly as can be seen by sparks and debris falling away from the rocket. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now United Launch Alliance fired off a next-generation Vulcan rocket Friday in the second of two “certification” test flights needed before the new launcher can be used to carry high-priority national security payloads for the U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. One of two solid-propellant strap-on boosters provided by Northrop Grumman suffered an anomaly of some sort during the climb out of the lower atmosphere, but the Vulcan managed to continue on into orbit. What impact the issue might have on the Vulcan’s certification is not yet known, but ULA CEO To...

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket sits at launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) ahead of the planned Cert-2 launch on Oct. 4, 2024. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now United Launch Alliance is preparing for its final planned test flight with its new Vulcan rocket in the pre-dawn hours of Friday morning. The mission, dubbed Cert-2, is the second of two missions needed before ULA can begin launching U.S. national security payloads on Vulcan. Liftoff of the Vulcan rocket from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is set for the beginning of a three-hour window at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 UTC). The weather forecast suggests an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions at liftoff. Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff. Vulcan is design...