Space News & Blog Articles

A Rocket Lab Electron rocket lifts off from New Zealand on the company’s first flight of 2024. Image: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab was back in action on Wednesday, kicking off its launch year with a recovery Electron mission from New Zealand. This was its second return to flight mission following a mishap late last year.

Liftoff from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand occurred at 7:34 p.m. NZDT (1:34 a.m. EST, 0634 UTC). Poor weather scuttled launch opportunities originally set for mid-January.

On board the Electron rocket for the “Four of a Kind” mission were four Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites from Spire Global and NorthStar Earth & Space.

This was the 43rd launch overall for Rocket Lab to date and the latest mission to recover the first stage booster. About 17 minutes into the flight, the booster splashed down in Pacific Ocean under parachutes, where it was scooped up by a recovery vessel.

Rocket Lab has ambitions of re-flying a first stage booster in its entirety. Last August, it demonstrated partial reuse with the re-flight of a Rutherford engine.

Polaris Dawn Commander Jared Isaacman (left) and Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet alongside a SpaceX render of the spacewalk that will be performed during their mission. Photoillustration: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Amid a flurry of astronaut missions scheduled for 2024, a commercial flight is aiming to mark a historic first: a non-governmental spacewalk.

This is just one of the goals of the Polaris Dawn mission, which was announced back in 2022. The mission’s commander, entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman, began working towards this mission shortly after the conclusion of his first spaceflight in 2021.

The Inspiration4 flight was a remarkable mission in its own right, as it became the first launch of an all-civilian group of astronauts, none of whom were current or former employees of a nation-state’s astronaut corps.

Isaacman and the mission’s pilot, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, recently sat down with Spaceflight Now to discuss the Polaris Dawn undertaking.

“This time around, there’s a lot of emphasis on our kind of specific objectives, the altitude, especially the EVA (extravehicular activity) and the new suit development,” Isaacman said. “And unlike being there at the end where they say ‘Here’s your suit,’ we get to be there through every iteration of it, you know, starting with an IVA (intra-vehicular activity) suit that’s not really suitable for going outside the vehicle, to what we have now, which is getting close to the flight article.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft for the first time on the NG-20 mission. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now

SpaceX is gearing up for its second launch bound for the International Space Station this month. But unlike all previous missions targeting the orbiting outpost, this flight doesn’t feature a Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX is poised to launch a Cygnus spacecraft on behalf of Northrop Grumman as part of NG’s 20th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract mission for NASA. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket supporting this launch is set for an instantaneous window of 1207 p.m. EST (0507 UTC).

The rocket will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission beginning at 10:15 a.m. EST (0315 UTC).

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1077, will be making its 10th flight. It previously launched the Dragon Endurance for the Crew-5 flight, the SpaceX CRS-28 mission as well as four Starlink flights.

A little over eight minutes after liftoff, B1077 will touchdown at Landing Zone 1 at CCSFS. Those watching the launch from Florida’s Space Coast or other parts of Central Florida may hear a sonic boom as the booster is reentering the atmosphere during the landing.

A Falcon 9 liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying 22 Starlink satellites. Image: SpaceX.

SpaceX launched its second Falcon 9 launch of the night with the Starlink 7-12 mission soaring skyward from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) on Sunday, Jan. 28, at 9:57 p.m. PST (12:57 a.m. EST, 0557 UTC).

It follows the Starlink 6-38 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center less than five hours earlier. The West Coast launch was adding another 22 Starlink satellites to a constellation with more than 5,300 satellites on orbit.

The Falcon 9 booster making this launch, tail number B1075, was on its ninth flight, all of which have launched from SLC-4E. It previously launched the Space Development Agency (SDA) 0A mission, the SARah 2 & 3 satellites and six prior Starlink missions.

About 8.25 minutes after launch, B1075 landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ This was the 81st landing on this droneship and the 268th overall Falcon 9 booster landing.

Here are the most current stats:

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center carrying 23 Starlink satellites into space. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

Update 8:40 p.m.: The first Falcon 9 of the night lifted off at 8:10 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX is preparing for a busy week to close out the month of January. Two Starlink flights are set to kick things off as the company prepares to launch a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station for the first time.

First up to bat is the Starlink 6-38 mission, which will send 23 more satellites to low Earth orbit. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket supporting this mission is set for Sunday, Jan. 28, at 8:10 p.m. EST (0110 UTC).

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning approximately one hour before liftoff.

SpaceX is calling upon Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to launch this mission. It will be the 74th launch of a Falcon rocket from this pad (including nine Falcon Heavy rockets) and the 167th launch overall.

A camera aboard a small micro rover deployed from Japan’s SLIM lunar lander captured an image of the probe resting on one side a few feet away after an engine malfunction during the final stages of descent Jan. 19. Image: JAXA.

One of two engines powering a Japanese moon lander during its descent to the surface Jan. 19 suffered a malfunction of some sort just 160 feet above the lunar surface that sharply reduced its power, the Japanese space agency said Thursday.

The spacecraft touched down at a safe, lower-than-expected velocity, but it was moving too fast sideways because of the unbalanced thrust. As a result, the otherwise-healthy probe apparently tipped over on landing, leaving its solar cells, attached to the upper surface of the craft, pointed to the west, directly away from the sun.

Unable to generate electricity, the spacecraft had only the limited power available in its on-board battery.

After downloading stored images and collecting as much science and engineering data as possible, flight controllers sent commands to shut the probe down 37 minutes after landing, before the battery was completely drained. That should improve the chances it will eventually “wake up” as the 14-day lunar day-night cycle proceeds and the angle to the sun changes.

While the engine problem curtailed post-landing operations, officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency — JAXA — said the Smart Lander for Investigating (the) Moon, or SLIM, spacecraft successfully demonstrated high-precision landing technology, the primary goal of the mission.

SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) aims to demonstrate “landing where it is desire to land”, pin-point landing technique and obstacle detection technique. Graphic: JAXA

A robotic Japanese moon lander touched down on the lunar surface Friday, but it immediately suffered a power glitch of some sort that prevented its solar cells from generating the electricity needed to keep it alive in the harsh lunar environment.

As a result, mission managers said, the otherwise apparently healthy Smart Lander for Investigating (the) Moon, or SLIM, was expected to exhaust its batteries within hours of touchdown, leaving it powerless and unable to receive commands or transmit telemetry and science data back to Earth.

There’s hope the probe could “wake up” at some point, assuming the spacecraft landed in the wrong orientation and the angle between the sun and the solar cells improves enough over time to generate enough power, but officials said that’s not at all certain.

“The SLIM has been communicating to the Earth station and it is receiving commands from the Earth accurately and the spacecraft is responding to these in a normal way,” Hitoshi Kuninaka, director general of the Japan Aerospace Research Agency, or JAXA, told reporters in translated remarks.

“However, it seems that the solar (cells are) not generating electricity at this point in time. And since we are not able to generate electricity, the operation is being done using batteries. … We are trying to (get stored data) back to the Earth, and we are making efforts to maximize the scientific (return).”

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander captured by a camera mounted onboard the lander on its second day in space. Image: Astrobotic

The first U.S. lander bound for the Moon since 1972 burned up in Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday. The unfortunate ending for Astrobotic’s spacecraft was deemed the most responsible choice given its hopes of reaching the Moon were dashed less than a day after it launched.

The Peregrine lunar lander is believed to have reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday, Jan. 18, according to Astrobotic. The company has been providing continuous insights into the mission, giving the public the opportunity to see the challenges of spaceflight with ongoing detail.

Astrobotic said any debris from the lander was expected to splash down in the South Pacific Ocean around 4:04 p.m. EST (2104 UTC) around longitude of 176.594 degrees West and a latitude of 23.087 degrees South, which is south of Fiji. The company said it lost telemetry from the spacecraft as expected at 3:50 p.m. EST (2050 UTC).

The reentry marked the end of the mission that launched on Jan. 8 onboard the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket.

This was the first lander that launched as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The agency paid $108 million to secure spots for five of its payloads among a total of 20 onboard the lander.

File: A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch a Starlink mission. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX scrubbed a Starlink delivery mission by Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday and rescheduled the launch from California for Friday. The Starlink 7-11 mission now scheduled for launch at 6:15 p.m. PST (9:15 p.m. EST (0215 UTC).

The company scrubbed the launch Thursday after loading propellants aboard the rocket at Vandenberg Space Force Base. It did not give a reason for the delay.

This will be SpaceX’s 7th launch of the year so far and its third from the Golden State. Onboard is a batch of 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, which will join the constellation of more than 5,300 currently on orbit.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.

The first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1063 in the SpaceX fleet, will be making its 16th launch and landing on this flight. It previously supported the launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft the Transporter-7 rideshare mission and 10 Starlink flights in its past.

A Falcon 9 lifts off from Kennedy Space Center carrying an international crew on a commercial mission to the space station. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

After months of training and detailed planning, the most international crew yet to visit the International Space Station blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Thursday to kick off a two-week research mission, the third fully commercial flight to the orbital outpost.

With retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría and Italian co-pilot Walter Villadei at the controls, flanked by Turkish mission specialists Alper Gezeravci and Marcus Wandt of Sweden, the Falcon 9 thundered to life at 4:49 p.m. EST and climbed away from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center atop a brilliant jet of flaming exhaust.

The launch originally was planned for Wednesday, but SpaceX ordered a 24-hour delay, primarily to complete a review of work to address a potential issue with straps used to lessen the shock of parachute inflation during descent. The vehicle then was cleared for flight.

Rocketing away along a trajectory paralleling the East Coast of the United States, the 12-minute climb to space got off to a picture-perfect start, thrilling area residents and tourists with a late-afternoon sky show despite low clouds that limited the view.

Adding to the spectacle, the booster’s first stage, heralded by twin sonic booms, flew itself back to a rocket-powered landing at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, chalking up SpaceX’s 43rd landing in Florida and its 265th overall.

The countdown clock at Kennedy Space Center on hold after SpaceX scrubbed the launch of the Axiom 3 mission on Jan. 17, 2024. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX called off launch of its third commercial crew flight to the International Space Station Wednesday to allow more time for pre-flight data reviews. The flight, chartered by Houston-based Axiom Space, was reset for Thursday pending final analysis.

The delay was announced as the flight’s four-man crew — retired astronaut Michael López-Alegría, Italian Walter Villadei, Swedish flier Marcus Wandt and Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci — were getting prepared for launch on a two-week research mission aboard the orbital outpost.

Liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center’s historic pad 39A was re-targeted for 4:49 p.m. EST Thursday, roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carries the rocket into the plane of the station’s orbit to enable a rendezvous.

During a teleconference Tuesday night, Benji Reed, SpaceX senior director of human spaceflight programs, mentioned two recent issues that engineers were reviewing: concern about Crew Dragon parachute “energy modulator” straps and the torquing of connectors holding the Crew Dragon to the Falcon 9’s upper stage.

Reed said an inspection of an unpiloted Cargo Dragon that recently returned to Earth from the space station revealed some of the folded, stitched-together straps holding the ship’s main parachutes in place during flight had not performed quite as expected.

Update: SpaceX has delayed the launch of the Axiom 3 mission to Thursday.

Dragon Freedom stands ready for launch Wednesday morning at pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.An international four-man crew strapped into a SpaceX capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday for a dress-rehearsal countdown that sets the stage for launch Wednesday on a privately-funded research mission to the International Space Station.

Retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, Italian co-pilot Walter Villadei, European Space Agency astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden and Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci spent the afternoon rehearsing launch-day procedures aboard their crew Dragon spacecraft before departing the pad to clear the way for an engine test firing.

As few hours later, SpaceX engineers fired up the Falcon 9’s first stage engines to verify their readiness for blastoff. If all goes well, López-Alegría and his three crewmates will strap back in Wednesday for launch at 5:11 p.m. EST, kicking off an automated one-and-a-half-day rendezvous with the space station.

During a late Tuesday teleconference, officials said the rocket and spacecraft were ready to go after last-minute fixes for a parachute issue that cropped up after a recent cargo flight and work to replace connectors holding the Crew Dragon to the Falcon 9’s upper stage that did not appear to be torqued, or tightened, to specifications.

File: A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch a Starlink mission. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX is looking to notch its fourth launch in January with another Starlink flight. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink satellites is targeting liftoff at 7:52 p.m. EST (0052 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The company was launching at a rate of about every four days or so from the Cape towards the end of 2023. However, the launch cadence on the East Coast has slowed somewhat with one of the two Florida-based droneships, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ still on the sidelines after it was damaged during a booster recovery in late December.

Spaceflight Now will have live launch coverage starting an hour before liftoff.

The first stage booster supporting Saturday evening’s launch, tail number B1073, will be making its 12 flight on the Starlink 6-37 mission. Its pedigree includes launching ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lander, SpaceX’s 27th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-27) mission and seven Starlink missions.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1073 will land on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’ This will be the 57th landing on ASOG and the 263rd SpaceX booster landing to date. SpaceX will also endeavor to recover the payload fairings.

File photo a a Falcon 9 prior to a Starlink satellite delivery mission. Image: SpaceX.

SpaceX pushed back to Saturday the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from California due to unfavorable weather for booster recovery in the Pacific Ocean. The launch, carrying 22 Starlink satellites, will add to the more than 5,300 satellites already in orbit.

The rocket is now set to liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Saturday, Jan. 13, at 12:59 a.m. PST (3:59 a.m. EST, 0859 UTC). The launch has already been delayed multiple times, as delay from Thursday was also due to poor weather, according to SpaceX.

The first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1061, is set to launch for the 18th time. It previously launched two astronaut flights, two Transporter ride-share missions and seven Starlink flights among seven other missions.

Following liftoff, it will land on the droneship ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ about 8.5 minutes later.

While four launches in two weeks would be an incredible pace for any other launch company, SpaceX’s launch cadence has slowed down a bit at the start of the year since one of its East Coast droneships is still sidelined.

(Left to right) Ax-3 Mission Specialist Marcus Wandt, Pilot Walter Villadei, Commander Michael López-Alegría, Mission Specialist Alper Gezeravcı. Image: Axiom Space

For the third time, Axiom Space is preparing a charter mission to the International Space Station. The Ax-3 mission carries the distinction of featuring an all-European crew, with Commander Michael López-Alegría being a dual citizen of both the United States and Spain.

Following the Flight Readiness Review on Wednesday, the crew spoke about their upcoming mission amid their ongoing quarantine in Florida, which has been in place for a little over a week. They are set to launch to the ISS, on Wednesday, Jan. 17, at 5:11 p.m. EST (2211 UTC).

“I’m very proud to being leading this mission to the International Space Station. It’s important not just for the scientific research and technology demonstrations and outreach events we will do, but it’s a very important step towards Axiom Space having a commercial space station in orbit before the decade is out,” said López-Alegría.

The commander of the Ax-3 mission is returning to the station for the second time as both a mission commander and a private astronaut. He previously flew as a crew member on three Space Shuttle missions and Expedition 14 via Soyuz TMA-9.

The pilot of the mission, Walter Villadei, a colonel in the Italian Air Force and head of the ItAF’s U.S. office overseeing commercial spaceflight will be making his second flight onboard a U.S. spacecraft. He previously flew onboard the suborbital Virgin Galactic flight dubbed Unity 23.

The Artemis 2 crew, standing in from of their Artemis spacecraft, discusses their planned around-the-moon flight with reporters at the Kennedy Space Center. Left to right: commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

A quartet of astronauts will have to wait until next year before their voyage around the Moon. In a robust update on Tuesday afternoon, NASA leadership announced that the next two missions in the Artemis program, and the first featuring astronauts, will each shift back by nearly a year.

The Artemis 2 mission, which was due to liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center this November, will instead launch no earlier than September 2025. The Artemis 3 mission, which will still feature the first crewed Moon landing since 1972, is now pushed to September 2026 at the earliest.

“As we remind everybody at every turn, safety is our top priority,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “And though challenges are clearly ahead, our teams are making incredible progress.”

The delay of the Artemis 3 mission was forecast in November in a report to Congress from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). That report suggested that landing back on the Moon was likely to actually happen in early 2027 “if development took as long as the average for NASA major projects.”

In order to safely carry out our upcoming #Artemis missions to the Moon with astronauts, we are now targeting September 2025 for Artemis II and September 2026 for Artemis III.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander in the clean room at Astrotech in Titusville, Florida. The spacecraft was the main payload onboard the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket. Image: ULA

In situation seemly pulled from a science fiction movie, a robotic mission to the Moon swung from the brink of failure to having renewed hope before the pendulum swung back again with a successful lunar landing for Astrobotic’s Peregrine spacecraft now unlikely.

The first commercially-built lunar lander from the U.S. ran into trouble just hours after launching on board United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) inaugural Vulcan rocket.

Soon after Astrobotic’s Peregrine spacecraft was delivered to a trans-lunar injection orbit on Monday morning, the company said an “anomaly” occurred that prevented it from orienting the spacecraft’s solar panels towards the Sun to begin drawing the necessary power to operate.

Astrobotic confirmed it was able to establish connection with the lander a few minutes after it started flying solo via NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). But the loss of control meant the craft’s batteries were being drained.

Excellent news!@astrobotic’s confirms Acquisition of Signal of the #Peregrine lunar lander through @CanberraDSN’s antennas #DSS35 and #DSS36
Great job team! pic.twitter.com/vgyrbruQYR

The inaugural Vulcan rocket leaps off the pad at Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The booster was powered by the first pair of BE-4 engines to fly in space. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now

With the company’s future riding on it, United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket successfully put a commercial robotic lander on course for the Moon after lifting off from Cape Canaveral’s pad 41 at 2:18 a.m. EST (0718 UTC).

This mission was the first certification flight of Vulcan, an important proving ground for the first launch vehicle developed by ULA since it was established in 2006. The milestone comes roughly a decade after the rocket was first announced.

“Yeehaw! I’m so thrilled! I can’t tell you how much,” said ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno after the rocket’s upper stage sent the Astrobotic Peregrine lunar lander on its way.

This first certification mission for Vulcan (Cert-1) was also an historic step in returning the U.S. back to the Moon’s surface for the first time since 1972. The primary payload onboard the rocket was a privately-funded robotic lunar lander, which was built by Pittsburgh-based company, Astrobotic.

A few minutes after the Peregrine lander separated from the Centaur 5 upper stage, flight teams with Astrobotic confirmed that they were getting telemetry data from the lander.

Watch live coverage as the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket will launches on its inaugural flight with the Peregrine commercial robotic lunar lander for Astrobotic. Peregrine will carry multiple experiments, scientific instruments, and tech demo payloads for NASA and other customers.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 2:18 a.m. EST (0718 UTC) at the opening of a 45-minute launch window.

The Falcon 9 rocket goes upright at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Photo: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

The next batch of 23 Starlink satellites for SpaceX’s space-based internet service are scheduled to ride a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Sunday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Liftoff is now targeted for 5:35 p.m. EST (2235 UTC).

SpaceX had earlier announced a four-hour launch window that opened at 4 p.m. EST (2100 UTC), but it needs to clear the way for the inaugural launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket from neighboring pad 41. The rocket was only raised upright on the launch pad at around 1 p.m. EST leaving crews racing to meet the new target launch time of 5:35 p.m. EST.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission starting one hour before liftoff. You can watch live views of the Falcon 9 in our Launch Pad Live stream.

The first stage booster supporting this flight, tail number B1067, will be making its 16th flight, becoming just the fourth booster to reach that milestone. There are only three other boosters with a longer flight history that are still in use after B1058 was unintentionally destroyed during the recovery process:

B1060, B1061 and B1067 all have the distinction of launching two Crew Dragon spacecraft each during their lifetimes. B1080 is set to join that club later this month when it launches on its fifth flight with the Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) astronauts aboard Crew Dragon Freedom.