Space Flight

On Thursday, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) head Bill Nelson announced the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972, has been delayed. The agency is now targeting April 2026 for Artemis II, a mission that will take astronauts around the moon and back, and mid-2027 […]

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced Jared Isaacman as his pick to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, pilot and commercial astronaut, has made two trips to space aboard SpaceX capsules in fully private missions organized through his Polaris program. He has partnered closely with Elon Musk and invested […]

Some California students set a series of records when their homebuilt rocket blasted to 470,000 feet at hypersonic speed in a launch from the Black Rock Desert in October. The University of Southern California’s Rocket Propulsion Lab, a club made up entirely of undergrads, published a paper on the project in November detailing how they […]

With a second-term president looking on, SpaceX’s sixth Starship test flight met the company’s metrics for success. Instead of returning to the launch pad, the booster diverted to an ocean ditching but the stripped-down first stage survived an aggressive reentry that was calculated to potentially destroy it. Donald Trump was on hand with Elon Musk […]

On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it has set a new record, overseeing 148 licensed space operations in Fiscal Year 2024—a 30% jump from last year.  The agency also forecasted that the number of commercial space operations could more than double by 2028, signaling unprecedented growth in the sector. To keep pace with […]

A woman who went through testing as an astronaut candidate in 1961 and finally went to space 60 years later was among those honored at the American Valor event in Washington on Saturday. Wally Funk was among soldiers, female special forces operatives and the famed Black 24th Infantry Regiment known as the “Buffalo Soldiers” to […]

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is calling for an investigation into SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s alleged association with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing national security concerns. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk and Putin have spoken over the phone multiple times since 2022. It said unnamed former government officials from the U.S., Europe […]

The Space Force is taking its X-37B space plane for a high-tech dump run that it’s billing as “groundbreaking innovation as it conducts national security missions in space.” In a rare news release about the hypersecret mission of the X-37B, the Space Force said it will employ aerobraking to rapidly change orbits using the drag […]

SpaceX succeeded with its most audacious feat to date, using mechanical arms deployed from its Texas launch tower to capture and hold the enormous Starship booster a few minutes after it launched a capsule to space. The 250-foot booster hovered above the Boca Chica launch pad before settling into the waiting arms of the tower […]

For the second time in a week, a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral had an anomaly but got the job done on Friday. The Boeing/Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance Vulcan system launch was the second of two certification flights, and it appears something on the lower end of one of the two solid rocket boosters […]