With just 11 days left in the year, it’s clear that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will not reach his stated goal of achieving 100 Falcon 9 launches in 2023. Nonetheless, the company’s achievements during the calendar year are damn impressive, with 2024 poised to be even more remarkable.
It’s time to look back at spaceflight in 2023, a real “two steps forward, one step back” kind of year, filled with highs, lows, and everything in between.
SpaceX is actively preparing for the third test of its Starship launch system, a mission that may feature the inaugural attempt at in-flight propellant transfer. This capability is essential for enabling deep space missions and is a crucial component of NASA’s Artemis Moon plans.
If you told a person on the street in the 1970s that humans would have no base on the Moon by the year 2000, they’d probably laugh in your face. Well, it’s 2023 and we still lack even the barest of lunar infrastructure. But this week, Alenia Space and the Italian Space Agency sketched out their plans for a sustainable…
Fresh footprints on the Moon aren’t likely to happen in 2025 as NASA hoped. A new report warns of significant delays to the Artemis 3 mission, the result of two key contractors—SpaceX and Axiom Space—not being able to deliver the goods on time.
Moving swiftly and learning through failure, SpaceX says it’s already looking ahead to version 2 of the Starship upper stage.
SpaceX’s Starship exploded not once but twice during its historic second launch on Saturday, November 18.
Starship pierced through clear south Texas skies on Saturday morning, for what turned out to be an eight-minute-long mission. The megarocket failed once again, but SpaceX achieved significant progress in various critical mission objectives.
SpaceX’s latest test flight of the Starship rocket lasted for around eight minutes—twice the length of the previous test. Both the booster and the Starship upper stage were lost, but SpaceX achieved many key milestones during the flight test.
This article has been updated to reflect the new Saturday launch date. Ground teams need the extra time to replace a grid fin actuator on the booster.
