Spaceflight

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 […]

Virgin Orbit has rolled out its solution for making space more accessible to those who want to put small payloads into orbit. The company has modified a Boeing 747-400 to take a 57,000-pound, 70-foot rocket on a launcher between the inboard left engine and the fuselage. The rocket, called LauncherOne, was lifted into place and […]

Just a few days after the death of Paul Allen, whose tech fortune has been paying for its development, the huge Stratolaunch airplane completed its latest round of taxi tests in Mojave. The airplane, designed to carry payloads into low Earth orbit, reached speeds up to 90 MPH, which the company called “medium-speed” taxi testing. […]

Of all the stories told about Neil Armstrong—and there are many—my favorite was related by the lively Alan Bean, the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12 who died earlier this year. One morning in 1968, Bean had learned that Armstrong had just punched out of the notoriously twitchy Lunar Landing Training Vehicle, missing being incinerated […]

A Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut were recovered unharmed early Thursday after the Soyuz booster they were aboard on a launch to the International Space Station failed. The failure put the MS-10 capsule into a ballistic trajectory and it and the crew were recovered 200 miles east of the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch point, NASA […]

Lockheed Martin revealed its new concept for a fully reusable lunar lander at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Bremen, Germany on Wednesday. The lander will be designed to dock with NASA’s planned Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway for service, refueling and storage in between missions. According to Lockheed, it will be capable of carrying 2,000 pounds […]

SpaceX has announced that Japanese fashion entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa has purchased a flight around the moon on the company’s still-conceptual Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). Maezawa, who is also an avid art collector, says he will be offering six to eight artists free seats for the flight in the hope that they will be inspired to […]

Space Race: Virgin Vs. Blue Origin The “race” between Blue Origin and Virgin seems to come down to sales hype. Branson, the ultimate showman, has the charisma to make his rocket powered shuttlecock look inviting while Bezos’ more mundane capsule has some actual historical experience to draw upon. Only recently has Blue Origin allowed real-time […]