Space Flight

Rather than entering lunar orbit next week for a planned Moon landing in late February, the space vehicle carrying the ashes of Gene Roddenberry and half the cast of the original Star Trek TV series will burn up this week on re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. Astrobotic’s Peregrine One lander has aborted its lunar mission […]

The first U.S. attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon in more than 50 years is in jeopardy after the Peregrine lander vented fuel from its propulsion system while being used to address another issue. After a good launch aboard a Vulcan Centaur rocket developed by the joint Lockheed Martin and Boeing venture United […]

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket successfully launched a classified military space plane from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday night.  The Dec. 28 launch marked the seventh mission for Space Forces’ X-37B space plane and the first time it launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket, according to SpaceNews. The mission had been delayed several […]

The Space Force’s X-37B “space plane” is expected to launch back into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday. It will join a similar spacecraft launched by China last week and the pair will become “two of the most watched objects on orbit while they’re on orbit,” according to Gen. Chance Saltzman, who heads […]

Leaders of the Senate space and science subcommittee have sent a letter to the FAA urging it to further streamline commercial space launch and reentry approvals. Chair Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona, and Ranking Member Eris Schmitt, R-Missouri, say red tape at the agency is threatening the country’s competitiveness and in getting high-profile missions like the […]

SpaceX’s second test flight of its Starship rocket was cut short early Saturday after the spacecraft exploded, but the company noted some major improvements over its first attempt last April. According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX lost contact with the spacecraft about 15 minutes after launch from its spaceport, near Brownsville, Texas, around 8 a.m. […]

SpaceX says it’s ready to launch its Starship rocket as early as Friday if the FAA can grant permission by then. The 400-foot system has been poised at the pad at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, “Starbase” for several weeks while the FAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service go over the potential environmental impact […]

China’s version of SpaceX has successfully launched and recovered a rocket in a critical step toward developing reusable spacecraft. iSpace’s Hyperbola-2 methane-liquid oxygen rocket went up about 600 feet and then descended under power to a soft landing on its four legs. The 60-foot rocket is a test stage only and is used for evaluating […]

SpaceX says it’s ready to launch its Starship rocket for a second attempt as soon as an environmental review of its new launch system is complete. On Oct. 31, the FAA wrapped up a safety review of the first Starship launch in April. That attempt resulted in the destruction of the rocket and massive damage […]

SpaceX is demanding a retraction from the FAA for a report that estimates debris from deorbiting Starlink satellites “would be expected” to kill or injure someone every two years. In a letter to the agency reviewed by SpaceNews, SpaceX principal engineer David Goldstein called the guesstimate “deeply flawed” and based on outdated data. But the […]