SpaceX

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 7, 2024. The mission, Starlink 10-1, was the first to send Starlink satellites to this shell of the mega constellation. Image: Spaceflight Now Update 8:57 p.m. EDT: SpaceX adjusted the T-0 liftoff time. SpaceX followed up its fourth test flight of its massive Starship rocket in southern Texas with a Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Friday night flight marked the 344th Falcon 9 to launch, a little more than 14 years after its launch debut on June 4, 2010. The Starlink 10-1 mission added another 22 satellites to the massive constellation consisting of more than 6,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit, according to expert orbital tracker and astronomer, Jonathan McDowell. Lifto...

For a fourth time in program history, SpaceX launches its Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in southern Texas. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now Update 2:32 p.m. EDT: Added mission details. For a fourth time in a little more than a year, SpaceX launched a test mission of its massive Starship rocket from its development facility in southern Texas called Starbase. The launch, dubbed Flight 4, push the launch vehicle towards its goal of being a mostly reusable rocket. Similarly to the previous three launches, Flight 4 did not include a payload and flew a suborbital trajectory. Unlike the preceding missions, Flight 4 saw a soft splashdown of the Super Heavy Booster (Booster 11) and of the Starship upper stage (Ship 29). Liftoff took place at 7:50 a.m. CDT (8:50 a.m. EDT, 1250 UTC)...

The Hubble Space Telescope is seen after its release from the space shuttle Columbia during a 2002 servicing mission. Credit: NASA Trouble with one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s three remaining gyroscopes, critical for aiming and locking onto targets, has prompted mission managers to switch to a backup control mode that will limit some observations but keep the iconic observatory running well into the 2030s, officials said Tuesday. “We still believe there’s very high reliability and likelihood that we can operate Hubble very successfully, doing groundbreaking science, through the rest of the 20s and into the 2030s,” Patrick Crouse, the Hubble project manager, told reporters during an afternoon teleconference. At the same time, Mark Clampin, director of astrophysics at NASA Headquarte...

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft aboard is seen on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 ahead of the NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, Friday, May 31, 2024 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test is the first launch with astronauts of the Boeing CFT-100 spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The flight test, targeted for launch at 12:25 p.m. EDT on Saturday, June 1, serves as an end-to-end demonstration of Boeing’s crew transportation system and will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the orbiting laboratory. Image: NASA/Joel Kowsky Launch teams are hoping that the third...

The seemingly star-cross Boeing Starliner — within minutes of its long-delayed blastoff on the spacecraft’s first piloted test flight — was grounded again Saturday when one of three redundant computers managing the countdown from the base of the launch pad ran into a problem, triggering a last-minute scrub. Engineers initially were told to set up for another launch try Sunday, at 12:03 p.m. EDT, assuming the problem could be resolved in time. But NASA later announced the team would pass up the Sunday opportunity to give engineers more time to assess the computer issue. The Starliner’s test flight includes rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station. Based on the lab’s orbit and the Starliner’s ability to to catch up, the next two launch opportunities after Sunday are Wednes...