Space News & Blog Articles

A European Ariane 5 rocket lifts off from the Guiana Space Center with the Juicy Icy Moons Explorer mission. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/JM Guillon

An Ariane 5 rocket took off from French Guiana Friday with the heaviest interplanetary science probe ever launched, kicking off a $1.7 billion European Space Agency mission on a decade-long quest to Jupiter’s icy moons in search of environments that could be habitable for life.

SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy rocket on their launch pad in South Texas. Credit: SpaceX

The Federal Aviation Administration approved a commercial license Friday for the first full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s nearly 400-foot-tall Super Heavy and Starship mega-rocket from South Texas, a launch SpaceX said could happen as soon as Monday morning.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with 51 CubeSats, microsatellites, hosted payloads, and orbital transfer vehicles on the Transporter 7 rideshare mission. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

File photo of SpaceX’s Ship 24 vehicle, slated to fly on the Starship integrated flight test. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now

SpaceX continues to prepare for a launch attempt as soon as next week for the first test flight of its Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket, with final work on the ship’s self-destruct system, data reviews, and the receipt of an FAA license still to come before teams proceed into a countdown in South Texas.

The test-firing of 27 engines on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket Thursday sent a plume of exhaust out of the flame trench at Launch Complex 39A. Credit: Spaceflight Now

SpaceX test-fired 27 main engines on a Falcon Heavy rocket Thursday in Florida, clearing a hurdle before installing three commercial communications satellites on the launcher for a mission to geostationary orbit next week.

The Ariane 5 rocket after rollout to its launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. Credit: ESA/S. Corvaja

The liftoff of Europe’s first mission to Jupiter aboard an Ariane 5 rocket was scrubbed Thursday in French Guiana due to a high risk of lightning at the launch site, delaying until Friday the start of the JUICE spacecraft’s voyager of exploration.

These photos and a time lapse video from the European Space Agency chronicle the final preparations for launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft from the Guiana Space Center on the second-to-last Ariane 5 rocket.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of an Ariane 5 rocket with the the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, mission. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft is buttoned up for launch inside the payload fairing of an Ariane 5 rocket. The illustration on the Ariane 5 payload fairing was the winning submission in a children’s art competition, drawn by eight-year-old Yaryna  from Ukraine. Credit:
ESA-Manuel Pedoussaut

The European Space Agency’s $1.7 billion robotic Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission is ready for liftoff Thursday from French Guiana, beginning an eight-year cruise to the solar system’s largest planet before becoming the first-ever spacecraft to orbit one of Jupiter’s moons in the 2030s.

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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for the ViaSat 3 Americas mission inside the hangar at Launch Complex 39A. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy mission, set for April 18 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will launch a powerhouse bus-sized broadband satellite for Viasat into a high-altitude circular geostationary orbit, a demanding flight profile that will require disposal of all three of the rocket’s reusable boosters.

The spacecraft for the Japanese-led X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, undergoes acoustic testing in Japan in December 2022. Credit: JAXA

The launch of a Japanese X-ray telescope and robotic lunar lander has been delayed to no earlier than August, and the launch schedule for another Japanese mission to return samples from a moon of Mars is in doubt as engineers investigate the failure of Japan’s first H3 rocket last month.

SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket stand fully stacked at the company’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX said Tuesday it won’t perform a final countdown dress rehearsal this week for the giant new Starship launch vehicle, and could send the rocket — standing nearly 40 stories tall on its Texas launch pad — on an around-the-world test flight as soon as next week.

Watch our live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Intelsat 40e communications satellite, which also hosts NASA’s TEMPO air quality monitoring instrument. Follow us on Twitter.

Artist’s illustration of the TEMPO instrument’s scan of air quality across North America. Credit: NASA

A $210 million NASA mission to improve air pollution monitoring over North America is set to launch Friday with an Intelsat communications satellite blasting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.



A camera on-board NASA’s Orion Spacecraft captured this view of a crescent Earth beyond the lunar horizon on Dec. 5, 2022, when it completed a return flyby of the moon in the final days of the unpiloted Artemis 1 mission. Credit: NASA

NASA announced Monday that former U.S. Navy fighter pilots Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, veteran space station astronaut Christina Koch, and rookie Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will crew the Artemis 2 mission to fly around the far side of the moon as soon as late next year, a test flight that will carry the foursome farther from Earth than any humans in history.



SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: SpaceX

The first 10 spacecraft for a planned U.S. military mega-constellation launched from California Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, setting in place the keystone for a multibillion-dollar network of hundreds of small satellites to improve defenses against hypersonic missiles and other emerging threats.

Israel’s Ofek 13 radar spy satellite lifted off aboard an Israeli-built Shavit 2 launch vehicle. Credit: Israel Ministry of Defense

Israel’s military launched a radar spy satellite March 28 from an air base south of Tel Aviv, adding an all-weather observation sentinel to the country’s fleet of intelligence-gathering spacecraft.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands vertical on its launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, awaiting liftoff with the first 10 satellites for the U.S. military’s Space Development Agency. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX aborted a launch attempt Thursday just three seconds before liftoff at the start of the engine ignition sequence, delaying the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket from California with 10 satellites for the U.S. military’s Space Development Agency.