Space Flight

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity space tourism vehicle has been retired after its seventh flight on Saturday, and it will be at least two years before replacement craft are ready. Unity took a pilot and four passengers to an altitude of 54.4 miles, just shy of the Kármán line (62 miles) commonly considered to the be […]

The Boeing Starliner capsule docked with the International Space Station at 1:34 p.m. EDT this afternoon, joining the SpaceX Dragon capsule “Endeavor,” marking the first time two capsules have docked with the orbiting space station. The Starliner lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida yesterday. A planned earlier docking around 10:30 a.m. […]

Despite a flap burn-through that had observers on the edge of their seats, SpaceX’s fourth test flight of its megarocket is being hailed as a stunning success. SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), “Successful soft landing of the Starship Super Heavy rocket booster!” The 400-foot-tall rocket launched this […]

An Atlas rocket has launched with astronauts aboard for the first time since Gordon Cooper’s final Mercury flight in his Faith 7 capsule on May 15, 1963 (powered by an Atlas LV-3B 130-D). The Atlas V rocket that launched today (June 5), manufactured by United Launch Alliance and powered at liftoff by a Russian-built RD-180 […]

China’s Chang’e-6 ascender module blasted off from the surface of the moon late Monday after receiving a container of rocks and soil from the landing module at its landing spot near the moon’s south pole. The ascender went into a lunar orbit and will rendezvous with a reentry spacecraft to transfer the load. The reentry […]

Just four minutes before liftoff, the launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule was once again scrubbed due to a “technical issue.” A retry was possible as early as Sunday, but NASA announced late Saturday that it was pushing the next attempt back to at least Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. EDT to troubleshoot a balky launch […]

The next group of SpaceX space tourists hope to include a spacewalk in their Polaris Dawn mission. It would be the first-ever private spacewalk, and some expensive preparations have been made. SpaceX has modified the interior of the Crew Dragon capsule to permit vacuum exposure and built new spacewalk-capable spacesuits for the four private astronauts: […]

A NASA contractor is warning the agency to perform more safety inspections before greenlighting the inaugural launch of its Starliner rocket slated for as early as next week. Reports say ValveTech, a subcontractor for NASA supplying the company with parts for the Starliner aircraft, has issued a press release urging NASA to postpone the latest […]

Gen. Tom Stafford, who helped bring Cold War enemies together in cooperation 140 miles above the Earth, died in a retirement home near Cape Canaveral on Monday at the age of 93. Stafford was the commander of an American capsule that docked with a Soviet Soyuz ship in July of 1975, heralding decades of future […]

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship launched successfully at 9:25 a.m. EST today (March 14). But controllers lost contact with the orbital flight about an hour into the mission. At about 10:40 EST, the New York Times reported that SpaceX acknowledged the orbiter did not survive re-entry but declared the launch successful from the standpoint of mission […]