Space News & Blog Articles

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub work outside the International Space Station on Oct. 25, 2023. Image: NASA TV
Two Russian cosmonauts ventured outside the International Space Station Wednesday to look for the source of a leak at or near a newly installed radiator on the Nauka lab module and to isolate it from coolant lines.

They also planned to attach a small synthetic aperture radar instrument to the hull of the multi-purpose laboratory, deploy a mini satellite to test solar sail technology and, if time is available, replace an electrical connector panel.

Floating in the Russian Poisk module, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, making his sixth spacewalk, and first-time flyer Nikolai Chub began the excursion at 1:49 p.m. EDT when they opened the side hatch to the vacuum of space.

For identification, Kononenko, call sign EV-1, is wearing an Orlan spacesuit with red stripes while Chub, EV-2, is using a suit with blue stripes. Both men are equipped with NASA helmet cameras.

The radiator in question was launched with the Russian Rassvet module aboard the space shuttle Atlantis in May 2010. The radiator and a small experiment airlock remained stored on Rassvet until earlier this year when spacewalking cosmonauts attached both to the Nauka multi-purpose laboratory module.

This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples of rocks and soil being collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech

The next decade will be a critical time for the exploration of Mars with the multi-agency Mars Sample Return (MSR) being the marquee mission. The undertaking has been decades in the making, but an independent review of the MSR architecture raised some key questions about the feasibility and cost.

An overview of that report and how NASA intends to respond to it was the focus of the fall meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) Steering Committee (SC). Members met virtually on Friday, Oct. 20, to discuss the findings.

“The entire planetary science community sees the value of sample return as a means of addressing high priority science in the solar system,” said Dr. Vicky Hamilton, the current SC chair and planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute. “And while the MSR may be the first mission that would demonstrate the feasibility of robotically selecting and returning samples, it’s not the only destination.”

“That said, independent of the scientific value of sample return, there are of course practical realities. And I think that’s really why we’re here today (Friday) and that is because doing sample return is hard,” Hamilton added. “There are technological hurdles, it’s going to cost more money than we’re accustomed to spending on the average Mars mission and there may be changes to what we’ve become used to as our Mars Exploration Program.”

MSR will rely on components from both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) among others. In May 2023, NASA established its second Independent Review Board (IRB-2) to comb through its portion of the plan and create a third-party evaluation of the costs, technical saliency and the schedule set forth by NASA to make it all happen.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket sends up 22 Starlink satellites on the Starlink Group 6-23 mission. Image: Adam Bernstein

SpaceX is hoping to ace its second launch of the day with another Falcon 9 rocket, this time launching from the East Coast. The Starlink Group 6-24 mission is targeting liftoff at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 UTC).

The mission will be 149th orbital launch for SpaceX from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the 58th launch from Florida’s Space Coast in 2023, breaking the record of 57 launches set last year.

Our live launch broadcast will start about one hour prior to launch.

SpaceX is launching on average once every four days. The company is aiming to ratchet up their launch cadence substantially in 2024, as it recently announced it would aim to launch 12 times per month or 144 times over the course of the year using its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

Saturday night’s launch will be the first time SpaceX has launched 23 of its Starlink V2 Mini satellites in one batch. The first-stage booster supporting the mission, tail number B1080, will be making its fourth flight after previously launching the Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and the Starlink Group 6-11 mission.

File photo of a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: SpaceX

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch 21 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:47 a.m. PDT (3:47 a.m. EDT, 0747 UTC). It is the first of two Starlink delivery missions planned for Saturday.

The Falcon 9 will set off on a south-easterly trajectory after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E). It will be SpaceX’s 22nd mission from the West Coast this year and its 75th orbital launch of 2023 overall.

Spaceflight Now will provide live video coverage in our Launch Pad Live stream.

The first stage booster is making its 16th flight. It previously launched the Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15 and ISI EROS C-3 missions, plus six Starlink delivery flights. After completing its main burn, lasting about two and a half minutes, the first stage will continue downrange to land on the drone ship ‘Of Course I still Love You’ stationed about 400 miles downrange (644km) in the Pacific Ocean offshore of Baja California.

Deployment of the 21 V2 Mini Starlink satellites will occur just over an hour after launch. The V2 Mini model is much larger than the previous V1.5 satellites. Equipped with upgraded antennae and larger solar panels, these next generation spacecraft can delivery four times the bandwidth of the previous satellites. This is the 28th launch of the V2 Minis since they were introduced in February this year.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifts off from West Texas on Thursday. Credit: Blue Origin

The three companies who have flown people to space and back, Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, joined two experts at a Congressional hearing to press for regulatory improvements, warning the U.S. risks losing its lead in spaceflight.

The 1.5-hour-long hearing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science was mainly focused on a regulatory framework called “Part 450,” which was designed to help streamline the process of issuing launch licenses under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which goes by the acronym AST.

The five witnesses argued that not only is the current regulatory framework not achieving its ideal goals, but it is stifling growth and innovation in the commercial launch market.

“I want to state clearly that AST is an outstanding and important organization that needs more resources and immediate regulatory direction from Congress,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability in his opening remarks. “AST’s role is critical to enabling safe space transportation, but we’re at a breaking point.”

“Licensing, including environmental approval, often takes longer than rocket development. This should never happen and it’s only getting worse,” he added.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket after Ship 25 was restacked on top of Booster 9 on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. The rocket was unstacked the following day. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX leadership is heading to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lobby for greater efficiency when it comes regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The company is hoping to streamline the process of issuing launch licenses for both Starship test flights and more routine Falcon 9 rocket missions.

Ahead of the hearing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told Spaceflight Now its regulatory approval process for the second Starship test flight could potentially last until the spring of 2024.

In a statement on Tuesday, a FWS spokesperson said their agency received a final biological assessment from the FAA in October and FWS has 30 days to review it. This came after the FAA sent FWS a letter in August, which requested “reinitiation of Endangered Species Act consultation.”

“Under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, reinitiation of formal consultation is required when a project and its impacts change significantly, the amount of take issued previously is exceeded, we have new information on listed species not previously considered, or a new species is listed,” the spokesperson said. “Reinitiation involving major changes in effects analysis or changes in the [FWS’] biological opinion are addressed fully in a new consultation. For SpaceX reinitiation with FAA, we are considering the operation of a water deluge system.”

That new deluge system was part of a list of 63 corrective actions created as part of the SpaceX-led mishap investigation following the failed launch of the first integrated flight test on April 20, 2023.

Update 11:53 a.m. EDT (1553 UTC): New T-0 launch time from SpaceX.

SpaceX is looking to follow up a double launch day on Friday, Oct. 13, with an evening launch of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will send up another 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to low Earth orbit.

The mission from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is targeting a liftoff at 7:52 p.m. EDT (2352 UTC) Tuesday. There is a backup launch opportunity at 8:36 p.m. EDT (0036 UTC on Oct. 18). There are also six backup opportunities on Wednesday, Oct. 18, ranging from 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 UTC) until 8:23 p.m. EDT (0023 UTC on Oct. 19).

The Starlink Group 6-23 mission comes just 4 days and 51 minutes following the last mission to launch from SLC-40, the Starlink Group 6-22 mission, which launched Friday evening at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 UTC).

With a successful launch on Tuesday evening, SpaceX will have completed its 74th launch of 2023. Put another way, that means it has launched on average once roughly every 3.92 days. The company also stated in a post at the weekend on the social media site X that following Friday’s Starlink launch, SpaceX has sent more than 900 metric tons to orbit this year.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 Starlink satellites, delayed by upper level winds and held up for the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Psyche, is scheduled to liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s pad 40 at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 UTC) on Friday night.

The U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, based at Cape Canaveral, on Thursday predicted a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather for the first of today’s launch opportunities which improves to 80 percent chance at the end of the window.

A launch attempt on Oct. 8 was aborted with just 23 seconds left on the clock. SpaceX said the delay was due to upper level winds. While a West Coast Starlink launch went ahead a few hours later, SpaceX put the Cape launch on hold at the request of NASA, which wanted to prioritize the Falcon Heavy launch of the Psyche asteroid mission, which launched earlier Friday.

SpaceX has five back up launch opportunities Friday if needed at 7:51 p.m. EDT (2351 UTC), 8:42 p.m. EDT (0042 UTC), 9:32 p.m. EDT (0132 UTC) 10:23 p.m. EDT (0223 UTC) and 10:29 p.m. EDT (0429 UTC). Should Friday night not work out, there are five additional opportunities on Saturday evening.

The Falcon 9 is carrying 22 second-generation satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service. The company announced recently that its now had more than two million subscribers for its broadband internet in more than 60 countries.

Falcon Heavy climbs away from Kennedy Space Center, carrying NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.

Getting off to a ground-shaking start, NASA’s $1.2 billion Psyche asteroid probe roared into space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket Friday, setting off on a 2.2-billion-mile voyage to a rare, metal-rich asteroid that may hold clues about how the cores of rocky planets like Earth first formed.

“We’re going to learn about a previously unstudied ingredient that went into making our habitable Earth, and that is the metal that is now in the Earth’s core and the cores of all of the rocky planets, cores that we can never visit but of course that we want to learn about,” said Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton.

“And Psyche is the single largest metallic object in our solar system. So if we want to learn about our cores, that’s where we need to go.”

Following multiple setbacks and delays in the wake of the Covid pandemic — and a 24-hour slip due to stormy weather Thursday — the Psyche mission finally got under way at 10:19 a.m. EDT when the SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s 27 first-stage engines ignited with a thundering rush of flaming exhaust.

After a final round of lightning-fast computer checks, the 230-foot-tall rocket was released from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, smoothly climbing away atop more than 5 million pounds of thrust.

Mission Status Center

The eighth Falcon Heavy to fly was raised to launch configuration overnight on Wednesday as it prepares to send the Psyche spacecraft off to the asteroid of the same name as early as Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Image: Adam Bernstein

With the exception of the weather, NASA and SpaceX said at a prelaunch news conference Wednesday everything was ready for the launch the Psyche mission at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 UTC) on Thursday, Oct. 12. on a seven-year mission to an asteroid of the same name.

Arlena Moses, the launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron, said the launch forecast for Thursday remains only 20 percent favorable for liftoff, but she said there were a couple elements that made her somewhat hopeful for a Thursday liftoff.

“It looks right now that warm front is going to be a little north of us as we go into the first part of tomorrow morning and what that’s going to kind of help us out with is that it should take a lot of the heaviest rainfall and best chances of storms north of us,” Moses said.

“However, we still will have a very unstable atmosphere, so there still may be some storms and rainfall around, probably lots of cloud cover, all of these things that we have concern for with our rocket launches and our lightning commit criteria,” she added.

Moses said that winds could pick up quickly out of the southwest of 20 to 25 miles per hour for the Thursday launch window. Looking at the 24-hour backup opportunity, there are lower winds of only 7 to 12 miles per hour and a 50 percent probability of ‘go’ weather.

File Photo of the Nauka module at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Shane Kimbrough

An apparent exterior coolant leak from a Russian laboratory module at the International Space Station has been reported by the crew. It follows similar leaks that struck a Russian Soyuz crew ferry craft and a Progress cargo ship within the past year.

This latest incident was reported by Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to NASA space station crew member Jasmin Moghbeli around 1 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC).

“We’re seeing flakes outside. Need a crew to go to the cupola, look toward the aft side, we think windows five or six, and confirm any visual flakes,” mission control requested.

Moghbeli, the commander of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission and current ISS flight engineer, said she would go check it out herself. She was asked if she could confirm the point of origin, since it was difficult to see that from the ground perspective.

“Yeah, there’s a leak coming from the radiator on the MLM,” Moghbeli said.

SpaceX is kicking off the second week of October with a planned pair of back-to-back Falcon 9 launches, lifting off from both of its Space Force-based launch pads.

Up first is the Starlink 6-22 mission, which is targeting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:56 p.m. EDT (0256 UTC). It will loft 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites up to low Earth orbit. The launch had been scheduled earlier in the evening but was delayed as pre-launch preparations had fallen behind schedule.

The Florida launch will be followed less than 4.5 hours later by the Starlink 7-4 mission, which aims to launch at 12:23 a.m. PDT (3:23 a.m. EDT, 0723 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Because of its trajectory, its payload consists of a slightly smaller load of 21 Starlink V2 Mini satellites.

Both mission will feature Falcon 9 rockets. The two first-stage boosters, B1067 at SLC-40 and B1063 at SLC-4E, will each be launching for the 14th time.

Both missions also have multiple backup opportunities within their respective launch windows. Starlink 6-22 has three reserve liftoff times, running from 10:58 p.m. to 12:35 a.m. EDT (0258-0435 UTC), and Starlink 7-4 has four additional launch times from 1:14-3:46 a.m. PDT (4:14-7:46 a.m. EDT, 0714-1146 UTC).

An Atlas 5 lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 6, 2023 carrying the first two prototype satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet service. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off Friday and boosted a pair of prototype internet satellites into orbit for Amazon’s Kuiper program, the latest entry in the increasingly competitive space-based broadband market currently dominated by SpaceX.

“We’ve done extensive testing here in our lab and have a high degree of confidence in our satellite design, but there’s no substitute for on-orbit testing,” Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology, said in a statement. “This is Amazon’s first time putting satellites into space, and we’re going to learn an incredible amount.”

The Atlas 5’s Russian-built RD-180 first-stage engine roared to life at 2:06 p.m. EDT, throttled up and smoothly powered the 196-foot-tall rocket away from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, arcing away to the east over the Atlantic Ocean.

The rocket’s first stage fell away as planned after propelling the vehicle out of the dense lower atmosphere, and the flight continued with the Centaur upper stage. In a departure from normal practice for commercial, unclassified flights, ULA ended its realtime coverage shortly after stage separation, at the request of Amazon.

The rocket company did, however, confirm the successful deployment of the Kuipersat 1 and 2 prototypes.

The dozen spacecraft for the penultimate flight of an Arianespace Vega rocket prior encapsulation in the payload fairing. Image: Airbus Space

A pair of Earth observation satellites along with ten auxiliary payloads will launch aboard Arianespace’s penultimate Vega rocket into sun-synchronous orbit on Friday. The light launch vehicle, which began flying in 2012, is set to liftoff from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Oct. 6 at 10:36 p.m. local time (9:36 p.m. EDT, 0136 UTC).

The main payloads consist the Thailand Earth Observation System-2 (THEOS-2) for the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) and the Triton spacecraft (also known as Formosat-7R) for the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA).

THEOS-2 is considered the primary payload and is described as “a high-resolution Earth observation optical satellite,” which uses 0.5-meter ground resolution imagery to support the operations of THEOS-1, which launched back in 2008.

The project was approved back in 2017 by the Thai government with a price tag of about $238 million, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

“The platform will host and exploit multi-source data in an interoperable and integrated manner,” said Dr. Anond Snidvongs, the executive director of GISTDA, in a statement. “The resulting insights will be key sources of information for Thai leaders and will help them deliver Actionable Intelligence Policy (AIP): tools for area-based management and decision-making.”

The first of Amazon’s satellites for its Project Kuiper internet constellation are set to be launched today aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket. The launch window opens at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 UTC) and lasts for two hours.

At 11:30 a.m. EDT (15:30 UTC), ULA entered the first of two planned 15-minute holds with the second set to occur at T-4 minutes. The launch team said it’s tracking no issues. Follow along for live launch coverage on YouTube and read up on the mission by clicking here.

Amazon purchased nine Atlas 5 launches for its internet constellation along with 38 flights aboard the forthcoming Vulcan rocket.

Satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation are hoisted up to integrate onto ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket. Image: ULA

Amazon is getting its own delivery fulfilled this Friday, adding to an extensive portfolio that includes its online marketplace, streaming video, grocery and cloud services, with the launch of two prototype relay stations for a space-based internet service it calls Project Kuiper.

The satellites, dubbed KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, are set to launch on Friday, Oct. 6 during a two-hour launch window that opens at 2 p.m. EDT (1600 UTC). They are hitching a ride to low Earth orbit atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket.

This will be the 20th ULA launch for a non-government, commercial customer. It’s also the 99th launch of an Atlas 5 rocket to date and the 8th launch in the 501 configuration, which doesn’t use side-mounted solid rocket boosters.

The rocket rollout out to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Thursday morning.

ULA said in a Sept. 29 blog post that about 18 minutes after liftoff, the pair of satellites will be deployed at an altitude of 311 miles, or 500 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, at an inclination of 30 degrees. At the request of Amazon, ULA will not provide live coverage after the Centaur upper stage separates from the first stage.

A rendering of the Nanoracks/Voyager Space commercial space station orbiting the Earth. Image: Nanoracks

About a year and a half after signing a Space Act Agreement with NASA to develop a commercial space station, Northrop Grumman formally withdrew from its solo plans in order to partner with Nanoracks, a subsidiary of Voyager Space.

Under this new venture, Northrop Grumman will provide cargo transportation services for the commercial space station dubbed “Starlab.” To that end, the Cygnus spacecraft will be upgraded to allow for autonomous docking with the future space station.

It’s a feature currently available on the SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft as well as Roscosmos’ Progress spacecraft. Currently, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is berthed to the International Space Station using the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

“This collaboration is a major step forward for the Starlab program,” said Dylan Taylor, Chairman and CEO of Voyager Space in a statement. “Northrop Grumman’s technical capability and proven success in cargo resupply services will play a pivotal role as we accelerate Starlab’s development. We’re proud to be supporting advanced docking systems that push LEO transportation operations forward and advance critical technology for deep space exploration. We are thrilled to have Northrop Grumman on our Starlab team.”

In addition to upgrading Cygnus, Northrop agreed to deliver cargo to Starlab over a five-year period.

Facing 50-50 weather odds, SpaceX is getting ready for a Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral Wednesday night on its 44th Starlink delivery mission of the year.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 is scheduled for 10:45 p.m. EDT (0245 UTC), but launch controllers will be keeping a close eye on the weather.

The U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, based at Cape Canaveral, is warning of scattered showers rolling in off the Atlantic and breezy winds. They predict a 50-50 chance of a weather rule violation, with cumulus clouds and liftoff winds being the major concerns.

SpaceX has four back up launch opportunities if needed at 11:38 p.m. EDT (0338 UTC), 12:48 a.m. EDT (0448 UTC), 1:36 a.m. EDT (0536 UTC) and 1:57 a.m. EDT (0557 UTC). There are six more opportunities on Thursday night should the launch slip further.

The Falcon 9 is carrying 22 second-generation satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service. The company announced this week that its service was now available across the entire U.S. thank to the four times extra capacity offered by the latest Starink satellite model, known as the V2 Mini. It recently said Starlink now had more than two million subscribers in more than 60 countries.

An artist’s conception of the Psyche spacecraft orbiting near the surface of the Psyche asteroid. Image: Maxar/ASU/Peter Rubin.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, now scheduled for launch on Oct. 12, will dial down the power of its maneuvering system after engineers discovered its thrusters were in danger of overheating during its eight-year expedition to explore a metallic asteroid.

The $1.2 billion mission was just two weeks from the opening of its launch window when testing of a spare thruster in a ground test bed revealed higher than expected temperatures. At first, engineers based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) suspected it was an isolated problem with the test bed equipment, but it soon became clear the thrusters installed on Psyche were also affected.

“The data that had come from the subcontractor about these cold gas thrusters was incorrect,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche’s Principal Investigator. The way the spacecraft was designed to operate was based on those specifications.

It was potentially another major blow for a project already delayed a year by late software, that had also faced challenges developing and building a spacecraft during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When thruster problem was discovered, the Psyche spacecraft was nearing the end of pre-launch preparations at the AstroTech processing facility in Titusville, Florida, near Kennedy Space Center. If any hardware changes were required, the mission could have missed its 20-day launch window and faced another long delay or even cancellation.