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Russian cosmonauts Sergey Korsakov, Oleg Artemyev, and Denis Matveev during a training session inside their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft. Credit: Roscosmos

Three cosmonauts set to kick off a six-and-a-half month expedition in orbit will launch Friday on Russia’s first mission to the International Space Station since the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

SpaceX raised a Falcon 9 rocket vertical Thursday night at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now

SpaceX raised a veteran Falcon 9 booster vertical on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral late Thursday, ready for a record-setting 12th mission Friday night with 53 more Starlink internet satellites.

The Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: NASA

NASA will roll the Space Launch System, a heavy-duty rocket designed to send astronauts to the moon, out of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday evening. A crawler-transporter originally built more than 50 years ago for the Apollo program will haul the towering rocket to its launch pad for a countdown dress rehearsal.

Astra’s Rocket 3.3 lifts off from Tuesday from Alaska. Credit: Astra

Astra’s small satellite launcher returned to flight Tuesday and delivered an unspecified number of small satellites into orbit after a successful liftoff from Alaska, helping clear the way for a series of three launches for NASA in the coming months at Cape Canaveral.



STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

A batch of 36 OneWeb satellites before a previous Soyuz launch. Credit: Roscosmos

OneWeb working with Arianespace, who owes the satellite internet firm six more Soyuz launches, to find rides to orbit for more than 200 of its spacecraft left grounded by an embargo on Western payloads flying aboard Russian rockets.

Astra’s Rocket 3.3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Feb. 10. Credit: Brady Kenniston / Astra

Astra engineers identified two problems — an electrical design issue and a software glitch — that prevented a rocket from reaching orbit last month with a suite of NASA-sponsored CubeSats, clearing the way for a return-to-flight mission that could launch from Alaska as soon as Monday.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft inside the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Boeing

The U.S. Space Force has postponed a multi-spacecraft mission that was booked to fly on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in April, moving a redo of a test flight for Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule to the front of the line on ULA’s launch schedule.

Artist’s concept of the GOES-T satellite in orbit. Credit: Lockheed Martin

A new NOAA weather satellite that launched from Cape Canaveral last week has resumed orbit-raising after the spacecraft aborted its first major post-launch maneuver, moving toward its operational geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on March 9. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography

Another grouping of 48 Starlink internet satellites soared into orbit Wednesday from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, or what SpaceX’s launch director jokingly called an “American broomstick” in a jab at Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Starlink 4-10 mission will launch SpaceX’s next batch of 48 Starlink broadband satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

A Falcon 9 rocket stands on pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, ready for launch March 9 with 48 more Starlink internet satellites. Credit: William Harwood / CBS News

The 40th dedicated launch for SpaceX’s Starlink internet network is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, adding 48 more broadband relay nodes to the ever-growing, privately-owned satellite constellation.

Iran state television broadcast a video of the launch of the Noor 2 satellite. Credit: IRIB

U.S. military tracking radars confirmed claims from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Tuesday that the Iranian military placed a small satellite into orbit.

A Long March 2C rocket lifts off with seven satellites on March 5. Credit: Galaxy Space

Six demonstration satellites for a future Chinese broadband internet mega-constellation launched March 5 on a Long March 2C rocket.

A Long March 8 rocket lifts off from the Wenchang space center on Feb. 27. Credit: CASC

Two recent launches from China set a new record for the largest number of satellites ever deployed by a Chinese rocket, and added a new radar imaging capability to the country’s remote sensing fleet.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly aboard the International Space Station in 2015. Credit: NASA

Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a U.S.-record 340 days aboard the International Space Station, has taken to Twitter to pass along “real” news to his 5 million followers, many of them in Russia, about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

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Support Spaceflight Now’s unrivaled coverage of the space program by becoming a member. Your monthly or annual membership will help us continue and expand our coverage. As a supporter of the site you will also gain access to bonus content such as this page.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket exceeds the speed of sound Thursday, about minute after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center with 47 Starlink internet satellites. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now

Another batch of 47 internet satellites launched Thursday on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center, heading into the sky to join SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network on the company’s ninth mission in nine weeks, keeping pace with a goal of around 50 Falcon flights this year.