SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket returned to its Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad on Wednesday in preparation for liftoff on Thursday with the Dragon SpX-11 spacecraft headed to the International Space Station with 2.7 metric tons of cargo
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Europe’s Ariane 5 workhorse reached its launch pad on the edge of the Amazon jungle on Wednesday in preparation for a Thursday night liftoff with a pair of milestone communications satellites from the United States and Europe.
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Japan is preparing an H-IIA rollout for liftoff on Thursday with the second Quasi-Zenith Satellite to help augment Global Positioning System services over the Japanese Islands and the Asia Pacific Region by increasing its availability and accuracy.
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket – still missing its Dragon spacecraft – rumbled to life for a brief moment on Sunday atop its Kennedy Space Center launch pad for a hold-down engine test to clear the way for liftoff as early as Thursday on the company’s second ISS resupply mission of 2017.
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A spent Long March 4B rocket stage re-entered the atmosphere on May 27, 2017 over the Canadian territory after nearly three years in orbit following a dual-payload launch in 2014.
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The rumble of rocket launches returned to Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Thursday when a Soyuz 2-1B rocket blasted off from the site’s 43/4 complex with the second EKS missile warning satellite operated by the Russian armed forces.
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Rocket Lab joined the ranks of only a few private companies capable of sending rockets into space, debuting their innovative Electron rocket on Thursday in a long-awaited shakedown mission. However, the rocket fell short of reaching orbit, Rocket Lab said after the test flight.
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The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) picked Boeing’s Phantom Works division to complete advanced design work for the agency’s Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program that aims to build and fly an autonomous, reusable hypersonic space plane capable of dispatching medium-class satellites into Low Earth Orbit.
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The European Space Agency concluded its inquiry into the crash landing of the experimental Schiaparelli Mars Lander last October, citing a lack of understanding and modeling of parachute dynamics experienced at high speed, insufficient failure identification and recovery options in the craft’s software and mismanagement of subcontractors & hardware acceptance as contributing factors for the botched landing sequence.
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Three weeks have passed since the secretive NROL-76 satellite launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Now satellite trackers have gotten hold of the clandestine spacecraft operated by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office in a Low Earth Orbit 400 Kilometers in altitude.
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Two NASA Astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station on Tuesday as a quick-response team to deal with the failure of an external command and control unit that occurred just three days prior.
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An innovative new rocket relying on electrically-driven engine pumps, 3D-printed components and an all-composite structure stands ready for liftoff atop its New Zealand Launch Pad to become the first in a series of Small Satellite Launch Vehicles to reach the commercial market, offering affordable access to space.
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NASA approved plans for an unscheduled spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday to swap a computer box on the Station’s central truss segment that failed on Saturday.
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The re-entry of the upper stage of China’s Long March 7 rocket that recently launched the country’s first orbital logistics mission was captured by dozens of observers in the Uzbek Capital of Tashkent.
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NASA’s Juno spacecraft completed the mission’s fifth science pass on Friday, coming within 4,000 Kilometers to Jupiter’s tantalizing cloud tops to gather another set of science data probing the gas giant’s atmosphere, internal structure and magnetic field.
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The Star 37D Upper Stage of the Delta 2913 launch with the COS-B Cosmic Gamma-Ray satellite re-entered the atmosphere on May 20, 2017 after over four decades in orbit.
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A highly sophisticated multi-use communications satellite relying on 3D printed parts and ion propulsion lifted off from French Guiana on Thursday atop a Russian-built Soyuz ST-A rocket, carrying out only its second Geostationary Transfer Mission from the French-operated space port on the edge of the Amazon jungle.
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