Spaceflight

Remembering Herb Kelleher Just wanted to say thank you for publishing Myron Nelson’s beautifully crafted remembrance of the late Herb Kelleher. It was spot on. I was privileged to oversee the induction ceremony of Herb in 2008 (along with Sean Tucker and two others), while serving as Executive Director of the National Aviation Hall of […]

For the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8 last month, the PBS NOVA series did a nice documentary on the flight that’s worth finding and watching. Among many, the producers interviewed one of the most cerebral of the astronauts, Michael Collins. He was the command module pilot on Apollo 11 and also a Capcom on Apollo […]

Over the weekend, Elon Musk tweeted out images of what his completed Spaceship test vehicle will look like, and said it should be ready for first flight within weeks. The ship is 30 feet across, the same as the final vehicle, according to Engadget. It has a shiny aluminum hull, but no windows. Musk said, […]

The government shutdown has reached beyond the national airspace system and postponed at least one space launch. According to spacenews.com, Exos Aerospace intended to launch its SARGE suborbital rocket from Spaceport America in New Mexico on Saturday but pushed it back to Feb. 9 in hopes FAA staff will be back at work and able […]

A Chinese probe has become the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). CNSA says the probe, named Chang’e-4, touched down at 10:26 a.m. Beijing Time on Thursday. Chang’e-4 is an un-crewed vehicle that includes a lander and a rover. “The Chang’e-4 probe, […]

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, completed its first successful trip to space on Thursday morning. As shown in the video below,Unity was initially carried to 43,000 feet by WhiteKnightTwo, an aircraft specifically designed to ferry the spacecraft to launch altitude. After release, Unity reached speeds of up to Mach 2.9 and attained an altitude of […]

Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson says the company will return to space before the end of the year and he’s looking forward to a trip there shortly afterward. The company essentially had to start over after losing its spacecraft SpaceShipTwo in a crash in 2014 that killed one of the two pilots onboard. There will […]

The massive runway at the Kennedy Space Center that was the primary landing site for the Space Shuttle could again be used for privately operated space missions. The FAA has released a “Final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision” on the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Cape. The facility encompasses 4,432 […]

An ID plate from Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle sold for $468,500 at an auction of 2,000 items of memorabilia owned by the first man on the moon Saturday. The auction raised more than $7.4 million and was held on behalf of Neil Armstrong’s family. A piece of the propeller and wing from the Wright […]

The failure of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle on Oct. 11 was caused by abnormal separation of one of the rocket’s boosters, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos. The committee investigating the incident says the malfunctioning booster hit the vehicle’s core stage in the fuel tank area, resulting in its decompression and a loss of attitude […]