Space News & Blog Articles

Actor William Shatner. Credit: NASA

Blue Origin confirmed Monday that actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on “Star Trek,” will fly into space on a suborbital launch Oct. 12 from West Texas.

The announcement Monday followed a report last month by TMZ that sci-fi actor will fly to space on a Blue Origin launch.

“Yes, it’s true,” Shatner tweeted Monday. “I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!'”

Shatner will fly on the second launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster with human passengers — and the 18th New Shepard launch overall — following a first crewed mission in July. On that flight, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen rocketed to an altitude of 66 miles (107 kilometers), just above the internationally-recognized boundary of space.

Funk, 82, became the oldest person to fly to space on the July 20 launch. Shatner, 90, will break that record.

File photo of a Falcon 9 launch. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography

The Italian Space Agency says it has booked a launch with SpaceX as soon as November for a COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation radar remote sensing satellite, shifting the spacecraft from a European Vega C rocket to a Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral.

A spokesperson for ASI, the Italian Space Agency, said two failures of Vega rockets in 2019 and 2020 delayed development of the upgraded Vega C launcher, which is now scheduled to make its first flight in the first quarter of 2022. The COVID pandemic also delayed the Vega C launch schedule, ASI said.

Italy’s COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation satellite fleet will provide high-resolution, all-weather global radar imagery for military and civilian applications. The first satellite in the fleet, named CSG 1, successfully launched in 2019 from French Guiana aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket sold and operated by Arianespace.

At that time, Italian officials hoped to launch the CSG 2 satellite on a Vega C rocket in late 2020. But delays in the Vega program pushed back the launch to 2021, and now the Vega C rocket would not be able to launch the CSG 2 spacecraft until later next year, after the Vega C test flight.

The CSG 2 satellite was one of the first payloads assigned to the new Vega C rocket when officials announced the launch contract with Arianespace in 2017.

Live coverage of the Expedition 65 mission on the International Space Station. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

America won the race to the moon, but Russia still proudly claims the most space “firsts,” including the first satellite, the first man in space, the first woman, the first spacewalk, the first multi-member crew and the first space station.

Now, with commercial spaceflight blasting off in the United States, Russia aims to chalk up another first Tuesday, launching a Russian actress and director to the International Space Station to film scenes for a feature-length movie — “The Challenge” — about a medical emergency in orbit.

In so doing, the Russian space agency Roscosmos will upstage any western actors who might be considering a shoot in space. NASA and its partners are not currently planning any such mission, officials say, despite unsubstantiated media reports claiming Tom Cruise is considering such a project.

But non-government space missions are now a reality thanks to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and available-for-hire Crew Dragon capsules, along with commercially developed sub-orbital spacecraft owned by Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos.



The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft swept past Mercury Friday in the first of six high-speed flybys to gradually set up the probe’s trajectory for a critical maneuver in 2025 to enter orbit around the solar system’s innermost planet.

Since its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018, BepiColombo has completed a slingshot maneuver around Earth and two flybys of Venus to bend its orbit around the sun closer to Mercury. The encounter with Mercury Friday was the first time BepiColombo visited its ultimate destination, but scientists will have to wait four more years for a full examination of the scorchingly hot planet.

BepiColombo zipped just 123 miles (199 kilometers) above Mercury’s airless surface at 7:34 p.m. EDT (2334 GMT) Friday, speeding by the planet barely seven weeks after flying by Venus, according to the European Space Agency.

The flybys use each planet’s gravity to alter BepiColombo’s flight path, reducing the velocity change needed from the spacecraft’s propulsion system.

File photo of the most recent Falcon Heavy launch in June 2019. Credit: SpaceX

The next flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, previously scheduled for this month, has been pushed back to early 2022 after more delays caused by its U.S. military payload, a Space Force spokesperson said.

The launch of the Space Force’s USSF-44 mission was set for Oct. 9, but officials have delayed the mission “to accommodate payload readiness,” a spokesperson for Space Systems Command said in a response to questions from Spaceflight Now.

The Space Force did not release a new launch date for the USSF-44 mission, but the spokesperson said the launch is now targeted for early 2022, nearly three years since the most recent Falcon Heavy launch in June 2019.

The Falcon Heavy will deliver multiple military payloads to a high-altitude geosynchronous orbit on the USSF-44 mission. The rocket’s upper stage will fire several times to place the satellites into position more than 22,000 miles above the equator.

The upper stage flight profile will include a coast lasting more than five hours between burns, making the USSF-44 mission one of SpaceX’s most demanding launches yet.

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

Chalking up a space first of sorts, a Russian actress, her director-cameraman and a veteran cosmonaut rocketed into orbit, chased down the International Space Station and successfully docked Tuesday, setting the stage for an out-of-this-world movie shoot.

Wearing a bright red flight suit, Yulia Peresild, who will play the role of a surgeon making an emergency house call to the station in the movie “The Challenge,” was all smiles floating into the lab complex, telling Russian television viewers she felt like she was dreaming.

“Everything was new to us today, every 30 seconds brought something entirely new,” she said during a brief video conference from the Russian Zvezda module. “We just met the rest of the crew, the cosmonauts and astronauts who’ve been living on board the station for some time now. But I’m still in a dream.

“I still feel that it’s all just a dream and I am asleep,” she marveled. “It’s almost impossible to believe this all came to reality.”



A Soyuz rocket rolled out to its launch pad in Kazakhstan Friday, ready to blast off Tuesday to the International Space Station with veteran Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild, and film director Klim Shipenko.

The Soyuz-2.1a launcher, positioned on its side on a special railroad car, emerged from an integration building at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and rode to the Site 31 launch pad just after sunrise Friday.

After arriving at the launch complex, the rocket was raised vertical over the pad’s flame trench. Ground teams raised retractable service towers into position around the rocket, providing access to the vehicle for final preflight checkouts, and for the three-person crew set to ride the Soyuz into orbit Tuesday.

Russian teams will load kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the three-stage rocket in the final hours before launch.

EDITOR’S NOTE: NASA TV’s live coverage of the Soyuz MS-18 relocation begins at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).



Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut strapped into their Soyuz ferry ship Tuesday at the International Space Station, ready to move the craft to a new docking port on Russia’s Nauka lab module that arrived at the complex in July.

The relocation maneuver will clear the way for a new Soyuz crew spacecraft to dock with the Rassvet module at the space station next month.

Russian commander Oleg Novitskiy, flying on his third expedition on the space station, will manually control the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft during the relocation. Novitskiy will be joined by Russian flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with the Landsat 9 satellite. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA and United Launch Alliance deployed a new Landsat satellite in orbit Monday after liftoff on an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, marking the 2,000th launch from the West Coast spaceport since 1958 and extending a series of Earth observations used by farmers, urban planners, and climate scientists.

The Landsat 9 satellite is the next in a line of remote sensing satellites developed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, providing a continuous, unbroken stream of imagery of Earth’s land surfaces since 1972.

The Atlas 5 launch team resolved minor during Monday’s countdown and gave the all-clear for liftoff of the 194-foot-tall (59-meter) rocket with the Landsat 9 satellite at 11:12 a.m. PDT (2:12 p.m. EDT; 1812 GMT).

Running on an automated countdown sequencer, the Atlas 5 fired up its Russian-made RD-180 main engine and hold-down restraints opened, allowing the launcher to begin a climb away from Space Launch Complex 3-East at Vandenberg.

The kerosene-fueled RD-180 engine produced 860,000 pounds of thrust to drive the Atlas 5 rocket through the atmosphere, swiveling its dual nozzles to maintain control as the launcher headed south from the California coastline over the Pacific Ocean.

A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set for launch with the Landsat 9 satellite, a joint project between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, and four small CubeSat rideshare payloads.

The 194-foot-tall (59-meter) rocket, propelled by an RD-180 main engine, is set for liftoff during a 30-minute launch window Monday that opens at 11:12 a.m. PDT (2:12 p.m. EDT; 1812 GMT).

The Landsat 9 mission will be the 88th flight of an Atlas 5 rocket, and the second Atlas 5 launch of 2021.

The Atlas 5 rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 3-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base, flying in the “401” configuration with no solid rocket boosters and a four-meter-diameter payload fairing.

Read our mission preview story for details on the launch.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of an Atlas 5 rocket with the Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite for NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

United Launch Alliance’s live launch broadcast begins at 1:11 p.m. EDT (1711 GMT) Tuesday, May 18.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket awaits liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with the Landsat 9 satellite. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now

The launch of a Landsat environmental monitoring satellite Monday from California’s Central Coast will be the first liftoff of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket since the company confirmed there will be 29 more Atlas 5 flights before the Atlas family’s retirement.

ULA is retiring its Atlas and Delta rocket lines with the debut of the company’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is scheduled to blast off for the first time next year.

An Atlas 5 rocket standing on a launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, set for liftoff Monday with the Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite, is one of 29 Atlas 5s remaining in ULA’s inventory. Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson, confirmed last month that all 29 Atlas 5s have been sold to customers for future launches.

ULA received its final shipment of RD-180 engines from Russia earlier this year. A dual-nozzle RD-180 engine, made in Russia by NPO Energomash, powers the first stage of each Atlas 5 rocket, generating around 860,000 pounds of thrust at full throttle while guzzling kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants.

The new Vulcan Centaur will be driven by twin U.S.-made BE-4 main engines from Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. ULA says the Vulcan Centaur will have more lift capability, additional mission flexibility, and will be cheaper to operate than the existing Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rocket families.

The Landsat 9 satellite is set for launch Sept. 27 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. These photos show the encapsulation of the environmental monitoring spacecraft inside the payload fairing of its Atlas 5 launcher.

Ground crews enclosed the 5,981-pound (2,713-kilogram) spacecraft within the nose cone of the Atlas 5 rocket Aug. 16 inside the  Integrated Processing Facility at Vandenberg.

Landsat 9 was built by Northrop Grumman and is the next in a line of land imaging satellites developed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The Landsat satellites track agricultural activity, forestry, water resources, urban growth, and other changes on Earth’s land surfaces.

The new Landsat satellite is scheduled for liftoff on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at 11:11 a.m. PDT (2:11 p.m. EDT; 1811 GMT) on Monday, Sept. 27.

Landsat 9 will launch on the basic version of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket without any solid rocket boosters. The spacecraft is nestled inside the longest version of the Atlas 5’s four-meter diameter (13.1-foot) payload fairing.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet snapped this view of two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the International Space Station during a spacewalk Sept. 12. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft is seen docked at the top-facing port of the Harmony module, while a Cargo Dragon capsule is docked with the forward port in the background. Credit: NASA/ESA/Thomas Pesquet

With the all-civilian Inspiration4 crew mission back on Earth, SpaceX’s director of human spaceflight programs says the company is seeing increased interest in more private astronauts flights to orbit, and may expand its fleet of reusable Dragon spaceships to accommodate the growing demand.

SpaceX has four more Crew Dragon missions to the International Space Station under contract with NASA, plus four private crew missions to the station for Axiom Space, a Houston-based company with ambitions to build a commercial research outpost in low Earth orbit that could replace the ISS.

There’s also a contract with the space tourism company Space Adventures for a standalone Crew Dragon flight that will not go to the International Space Station, a solo mission similar to the Inspiration4 flight that ended Saturday with a successful splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX also has a contract with NASA for resupply missions to the space station using the company’s fleet of Cargo Dragon capsules, which are based on the crew-rated spaceship, but fly without seats or launch escape rockets.

“We’ve got lots of great NASA missions for crew and cargo, and we’ve got the commercial astronaut missions,” said Benji Reed, the manager in charge of SpaceX’s crew programs, following the splashdown of the four-person Inspiration4 crew Saturday night.



The Falcon 9 rocket used last week to launch the all-civilian Inspiration4 crew into space has returned to a SpaceX hangar at Kennedy Space Center for refurbishment ahead of a future mission.

On Thursday, the 156-foot booster rode SpaceX’s rocket transporter from Port Canaveral through Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center toward Hangar X, the company’s new processing facility a few miles south of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building.

SpaceX’s drone ship “Just Read The Instructions” returned the rocket to port Sunday from an offshore landing zone in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral. The reusable booster, designated B1062 in SpaceX’s inventory, landed on the football field-sized drone ship less than 10 minutes after liftoff Sept. 15 from Kennedy, while the Falcon 9’s expendable upper stage continued into orbit with the Inspiration4 mission.

The four-person Inspiration4 crew spent three days in orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft before re-entering the atmosphere and safely splashing down in the Atlantic on Sept. 18.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft returned to the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 19 for troubleshooting. Credit: Boeing

The head of NASA’s space operations division said this week an unpiloted test flight of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule to the International Space Station, delayed from August by valve problems, will likely not launch until next year.

Officials may swap out the spacecraft’s service module, which contains the balky propulsion system valves, for a new one, said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Lueders said Boeing engineers continue troubleshooting valves on the Starliner service module. Boeing’s Starliner test flight, called Orbital Flight Test-2, was supposed to launch last month to the International Space Station on a final demonstration of the crew capsule before it flies with astronauts.

But managers scrubbed a launch attempt Aug. 3 after some of the valves inside the Starliner service module failed to open during a pre-flight checkout.

An initial round of troubleshooting with the Starliner spacecraft on top of its United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station did not fully resolve the problem. Managers decided to remove the Starliner spacecraft from the Atlas 5 rocket and transfer it back to Boeing’s factory at nearby Kennedy Space Center for more work.

Kathy Lueders, who has led NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate for more than a year, will be the associate administrator for the new Space Operations Mission Directorate. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

NASA announced Tuesday that the agency’s human spaceflight division will split into two new mission directorates, one focused on space operations and another on deep space exploration, returning to the organizational structure of a decade ago.

The new Space Operations Mission Directorate will oversee mature human spaceflight programs, such as the International Space Station and commercial crew and cargo missions. The operations directorate is also in charge NASA’s efforts to commercialize low Earth orbit, an objective the agency hopes will lead to privately-owned space stations.

The Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate will manage NASA’s Artemis moon program, including the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and the Human Landing System, the spacecraft that will carry astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

The change will dissolve the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, or HEOMD, which NASA established in 2011 to combine the previous operations and exploration directorates after the retirement of the space shuttle and the cancellation of the Constellation moon program.

NASA officials said the growth of the agency’s human spaceflight programs now encompasses commercialization efforts, ongoing mission operations, and development of heavy-lift rockets, deep space crew capsules, and a mini-space station called the Gateway to orbit the moon.

A view of NASA’s Space Launch System inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. This picture was taken Sept. 17 after retraction of work platforms ahead of the Umbilical Release and Retract Test. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

The swing arms on the mobile launch tower for NASA’s Space Launch System released and retracted Sunday night inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, another key test on the march toward liftoff of the Artemis 1 moon mission.

The Umbilical Release and Retract Test, or URRT, validated the way connections between the Space Launch System and its mobile launch tower will rotate or drop away at ignition and liftoff.

The swing arms and umbilicals provide power, communications, coolant, and propellant to the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft on the launch pad, according to NASA.

The umbilicals detached simultaneously from the nearly fully-assembled Space Launch System moon rocket in the VAB high bay, just as they will during liftoff from pad 39B at Kennedy to begin the Artemis 1 mission.

Artemis 1 is the first test flight of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon in the 2020s. The first test flight of NASA’s new Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket will send an unpiloted Orion crew capsule into lunar orbit for a demonstration mission lasting several weeks. The Orion spacecraft will return to Earth for a splashdown and recovery in the Pacific Ocean.

The Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite inside the payload fairing of an Atlas 5 rocket at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Credit: NASA

The next Landsat observatory has been mounted on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in California for liftoff Sept. 27, continuing an unbroken record of Earth observations to track urban sprawl, water usage, tropical deforestation, retreating glaciers, and more over the last half-century.

Landsat 9 is the next in a series of land imaging missions launched since 1972, tracking nearly 50 years of city growth, climate change, and trends in use of lands for agriculture and infrastructure.

“We are days away from launching our ninth Landsat mission,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth science division. “The Landsat program spans nearly 50 years and is a cornerstone of our understanding of Earth’s surface.

“Each satellite in the Landsat program has captured increasingly sophisticated data and imagery documenting Earth’s changing landscapes, and increasing our understanding of the planet on regional, national and global scales,” St. Germain said in a recent press conference on the Landsat 9 mission.

“Landsat data informs a wide range of decisions related to managing crop health and water resources,” she said. “These are critical decisions to mitigate global issues like regional famine or food scarcity in an era of accelerating climate change.