A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired up atop the company’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad on Wednesday for the customary static fire test ahead of entering final preparations for liftoff as early as Monday with NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunter
Read more
China pulled off a completely secretive space launch on Tuesday, firing into orbit a trio of naval reconnaissance satellites and a small technology test satellite via a Long March 4C rocket.
Read more
Iridium 19 re-entered the atmosphere on April 7, 2018 after over 20 years in orbit as part of the original Iridium Communications Constellation, a low-orbiting satellite system for global communications including voice and point-to-point data services via 66 active satellites in six orbital planes.
Read more
Planet’s Flock 2E-7 Earth-imaging satellite re-entered the atmosphere on April 6, 2018 – decaying 22 months after being released from the International Space Station to join Planet’s orbiting constellation of Doves that image the entire Earth at least once per day.
Read more
Three CubeSat Doves belonging to Planet Lab’s Flock of satellites re-entered the atmosphere in a single calendar day on April 5, 2018 after each spent nearly two years in orbit as part of the company’s Earth-imaging constellation.
Read more
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, the company’s second SpaceShipTwo, flew under rocket engine power for the first time on Thursday in a major milestone toward turning the winged suborbital spaceship into commercial service for tourist and science flights to the edge of space.
Read more
Loaded with a payload mass of over ten metric tons, Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket pierced into the twilight haze over French Guiana on Thursday on a flight to redeem itself after a nail-biting mission in January that saw the rocket take a wrong turn and lift its passengers into an erroneous orbit.
Read more
Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket stands ready for its comeback mission a little over two months after taking a wrong turn and leaving a pair of communications satellites in a seriously-deficient orbit.
Read more
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday for its second cargo delivery after having resupplied the Station back in 2016.
Read more
A six-year old upper stage from India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle re-entered the atmosphere on April 3, 2018 after a slow decline from a Sun Synchronous Orbit.
Read more
A discarded Ariane 5 Sylda payload adapter placed into orbit in 2007 re-entered the atmosphere on April 3, 2018 after
Read more
Still covered in soot from a previous supply run to the International Space Station, a SpaceX Falcon 9 took to the skies over Florida’s Cape Canaveral Monday afternoon – lifting a flight-proven Dragon spacecraft into orbit for a critical delivery of science gear, supplies and maintenance hardware to the orbiting laboratory as the first of at least six cargo ships inbound to the U.S. Segment of ISS this year.
Read more
A flight-proven Falcon 9 – the ninth of its kind to take flight – lifted off from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 20:30:38 UTC on April 2nd, 2018 with the Dragon SpX-14 spacecraft, a previously-flown Dragon with 33 days of spaceflight experience.
Read more
China’s abandoned Tiangong-1 space station met its fiery end in the early hours of Monday when re-entering Earth’s atmosphere after 2,376 days in orbit, serving as a stepping stone toward a large modular Space Station China plans to deploy in 2020.
Read more
India’s GSAT-6A military communications satellite has unexpectedly gone silent after conducting a major engine burn on Saturday, indicating a potentially serious onboard anomaly had occurred less than two days after the craft’s successful launch atop a GSLV rocket.
Read more
China carried out its tenth successful space launch of the year on Saturday, employing a Long March 4C rocket with extra-extended payload fairing to transport a stack of three Gaofen-1 Earth-observation satellites into Sun Synchronous Orbit.
Read more
A flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 – the eighth of its kind to take flight – leapt of its Pacific-side launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base at sunrise on Friday to loft the fifth set of Iridium-NEXT communications satellites into orbit and take the largest constellation upgrade in history one step closer to the finish line.
Read more