Update: June 25, 6:00 p.m. ET: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully blasted off shortly before 5:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
On Monday, January 8, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur is scheduled for its inaugural flight, a mission that will send a wide range of payloads to the Moon. Although not as advanced as SpaceX’s rockets, this expendable rocket boasts features that could make it a cornerstone vehicle in the industry.
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.
For the first time, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy will attempt to deliver the Pentagon’s spaceplane to low Earth orbit. The mission marks the seventh for the mysterious spacecraft, aiming to expand the Space Force’s knowledge of the space environment and test new technologies.
From capturing precious asteroid samples and exploring volcanic moons to navigating mysterious toxic blobs and portraying fictional Space Force battles, October was a captivating month in spaceflight and space exploration, as these images attest.
Blue Origin revealed plans for a new spacecraft platform with the potential to reshape in-space logistics, offering unprecedented maneuverability and a host of advanced capabilities.
Update: October, 13, 11:17 a.m. ET: Psyche is finally in space. The Falcon Heavy lifted off on time, sending the probe on its 2.2 billion-mile journey to a highly metallic asteroid.
Wedged between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the main asteroid belt contains over 1 million rocky objects, but perhaps few of them are as intriguing as Psyche. The metal-rich asteroid might have once been an ancient planetary building block that was stripped of its outer rocky shell as our solar system came to be.…
A week before it was set to launch to a distant metal rich asteroid, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is forced to remain grounded until the space agency resolves an issue with its thrusters.