Space News & Blog Articles

Jasmin Moghbeli, wearing a spacesuit with red stripes, works with Loral O’Hara to secure insulation around a failed radio communications unit during the fourth all-female spacewalk. Image: NASA TV.

Astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara worked outside the International Space Station Wednesday to replace a bearing assembly in one of the lab’s solar array rotation mechanisms. But the task took longer than expected and they were unable to retrieve a failed electronics box as planned.

It was the first spacewalk for Moghbeli and O’Hara, the fourth all-female excursion and the first such outing since January 2020 when Jessica Meir and Christina Koch completed their third EVA, or extra-vehicular activity.

The year’s 12th spacewalk began at 8:05 a.m. EDT when Moghbeli and O’Hara switched their spacesuits to battery power.

The two major goals of the 269th station spacewalk were to replace a degraded bearing assembly in one of the station’s two solar array rotation mechanisms and to retrieve a failed communications component stored on an external platform so it could be shipped back to Earth for repairs.

O’Hara focused on replacing the bearing assembly in the station’s left-side solar alpha rotary joint, or SARJ, which rotates outboard solar arrays to maximize energy production. Each SARJ is equipped with 12 bearing assemblies that clamp onto a rotating 10.5-foot-wide “race ring.”

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander in the clean room at Astrotech in Titusville, Florida. The spacecraft will be the main payload onboard the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket. Image: ULA

The first payload teed up for NASA’s industry-led missions to the Moon has arrived in Florida. Astrobotic announced on Halloween that its Peregrine lunar lander was unpacked inside a clean room on the Space Coast after leaving Astrobotic’s facilities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Friday.

The mission will be the first for both Astrobotic and its ride to space, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. President and CEO Tory Bruno said in a tweet on Tuesday that the launch time on Dec. 24 is 1:49 am EST (0649 UTC).

“It’s incredibly thrilling. We’ve been talking about this mission for 16 years as an organization, our first mission to the Moon, and now it’s finally here,” said Dan Hendrickson, Astrobotic’s Vice President of Business Development. “The team is exhilarated, anxious to get off the launchpad and ready to fly. So really, it’s a dream come true now that we’re here.”

Hendrickson spoke with Spaceflight Now on the sidelines of the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium on Oct. 27, the day that the Peregrine lander hit the road to head down to Florida.

Hendrickson said it will be a fairly straightforward process for them to get to launch, now that they’re in the Sunshine State. He said teams with Astrobotic have been working with ULA for months about the fueling steps, transportation to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility and integration on top of the Centaur 5 upper stage.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket stands fully stacked near the shoreline of Texas at its Starbase facility on Oct. 20, 2023. On Oct. 31, the FAA said it concluded its safety review ahead of its second test flight. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s highly anticipated second test flight of its Starship super heavy lift rocket is one step closer to liftoff from South Texas. On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced the conclusion of its safety review.

The agency issued a brief statement noting the this portion of the assessment wrapped up on Oct. 31. It describes the safety review as being “focused on issues that affect public health and safety of property.”

“It consists of evaluating the applicant’s safety organization, system safety processes, flight safety analysis, and quantitative risk criteria for launch, reentry, and vehicle disposal,” the FAA stated.

The biggest outstanding piece of the equation before the second integrated flight test is the environmental review, which is being done in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

On Oct. 5, the FAA sent its final biological assessment to FWS. The latter agency had up to 30 days to review that document, but announced that it finished that review on Oct. 19 and reinitiated its formal Endangered Species Act consultation with the FAA.

A Falcon 9 booster, making its eighth flight, lifts off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 30. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

A Falcon 9 carrying 23 more satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service lifted off from Cape Canaveral Monday, bringing the total number of Starlinks currently in orbit to more than 5,000 satellites. Liftoff from pad 40 occurred at 7:20 p.m. EDT (2320 UTC).

On Sunday night the countdown reached T-30 seconds when an abort was called. The launch director said a problem was detected with the system used to separate the first and second stages of the rocket and launch was pushed back to Monday.

After lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Falcon 9 pitched and rolled onto a south-easterly trajectory as it targeted an orbit inclined at 43 degrees to the equator.

The first-stage booster, making its eighth flight, successfully touched down on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions, stationed east of the Bahamas, about eight and a half minutes after launch.

The booster, tail number B1077, first flew in October 2022, carrying Crew 5 to the International Space Station aboard Dragon Endurance. It went on to fly the GPS III F6, Inmarsat I6-F2, CRS-28, and Intelsat G-37 missions, plus two prior Starlink delivery flights.

File photo of SpaceX’s Starlink V2 Mini satellites inside a payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral earlier this year. Credit: SpaceX

Update 8:38 p.m. EDT (0038 UTC): A scrub was called at T-30 seconds to liftoff. The launch team will target its next launch attempt with a 24-hour recycle. The launch window opens at 7:20 p.m. EDT (2320 UTC).

Original story:

SpaceX is gearing up to launch 23 more satellites for its Starlink internet service from Cape Canaveral on Sunday, its second Falcon 9 launch of the day. Liftoff from pad 40 is scheduled for 8:17 p.m. EDT (0017 UTC).

Earlier Sunday, a Falcon 9 lofted 22 Starlinks from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. That launch brought the number of Starlink satellites currently in orbit to 4,989, according to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell. If all goes according to plan, SpaceX will have more than 5,000 Starlink satellites in orbit by the end of the day.

A forecast issued by the 45th Weather Squadron at Cape Canaveral on Saturday gave the Falcon 9 an 85-percent chance of favorable conditions for launch. The main concerns are violations of liftoff wind limits and rules associated with lightning-triggering cumulus clouds. There was a low to moderate risk of poor weather in the booster recovery area near the Bahamas.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Oct. 29, 2023, carrying 22 Starlink satellites. Image: SpaceX.

The first of two Falcon 9 missions SpaceX is planning for Sunday carried into orbit the largest batch of second-generation Starlink satellites to be launched from the West Coast. It was the 50th Starlink launch of the year.

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT / 0900 UTC) with 22 satellites aboard.

The California launch will be followed on Sunday by another Starlink delivery mission carrying 23 satellites, which will launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 UTC).

The Starlink 7-6 mission was the first time a Falcon 9 has carried 22 of the so-called V2 Mini satellites from the West Coast. Previously, missions from there had been limited to 15 or 21 Starlinks, depending on the orbit. On the East Coast, a Falcon 9 launched 23 V2 Minis a week ago on Oct. 21, one more than the previous maximum load for a mission from the Cape.

SpaceX has not explained how it is achieving this extra delivery capacity. It’s possibly due an improvement in the rated performance of the Falcon 9 or perhaps a manufacturing change that has reduced the satellites’ total weight.

The completed Nova-C lander for the IM-1 mission is photographed in mid-October at Intuitive Machines’ facilities in Houston, Texas, ahead of it being shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Image: Intuitive Machines

The first lunar lander aiming for a touchdown at the Moon’s south pole has a new launch date. Intuitive Machines said Friday it is targeting the launch of its Nova-C lander on the IM-1 mission for no earlier than January 12, 2024.

Trent Martin, the Vice President of Lunar Access at Intuitive Machines, told Spaceflight Now it’s a good feeling to finally reach this point.

“We began this journey on IM-1 back in 2019. Hoping to launch a little bit earlier. We ran into some technical difficulties and solving those problems means getting to this point, where you have a vehicle and it’s ready to go launch, make it even more exciting because you know you solved some problems, some really technical, difficult problems,” said Martin, who was attending the von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

“We’re ready and the vehicle’s tested and checked out. Everything we need to do is wrapped up and ready to go. Just getting ready to ship it down to the Cape.”

Martin said the Nova-C lander will be transported from the company’s facilities in Houston, Texas, down to Florida in late November for final pre-launch processing.

Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the Human Landing System program, moderates a fireside chat with Benji Reed, Sr. Director of Human Spaceflight Programs at SpaceX (left) and John Couluris, Sr. VP of Lunar Transportation at Blue Origin. Image: Will Robinson-Smith

After a successful mission with Artemis 1 in November, 2022, and with the pieces of the Artemis 2 architecture coming together for a launch targeting late 2024, NASA continues to simultaneously push towards the big items that are key to the future missions.

One of the biggest outstanding feats is getting ready to actually bring humans to the surface of the Moon. Overseeing that aspect of the missions, starting with Artemis 3, is Dr. Lisa Watson-Morgan, the manager of the Human Landing System (HLS) program operating at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

In a sit-down interview with Spaceflight Now amid the von Braun Space Exploration Symposium, Watson-Morgan said getting these landers ready for their debuts on the Artemis 3 and Artemis 5 mission respectively for SpaceX and Blue Origin provide both numerous challenges as well as unique opportunities.

“I think we have great, great challenges in front of us,” Watson-Morgan said. “Right now, today, I don’t see anything that’s stopping us, but that’s today.”

She pointed to some of the leaps forward in rocket capabilities from SpaceX as a barometer for pulling off the lunar landing capability of its Starship rocket. Watson-Mogran also noted that the Blue Origin-led team has Lockheed Martin as a partner, which brings expertise from the Orion program with it.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub work outside the International Space Station on Oct. 25, 2023. Image: NASA TV
Two Russian cosmonauts ventured outside the International Space Station Wednesday to look for the source of a leak at or near a newly installed radiator on the Nauka lab module and to isolate it from coolant lines.

They also planned to attach a small synthetic aperture radar instrument to the hull of the multi-purpose laboratory, deploy a mini satellite to test solar sail technology and, if time is available, replace an electrical connector panel.

Floating in the Russian Poisk module, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, making his sixth spacewalk, and first-time flyer Nikolai Chub began the excursion at 1:49 p.m. EDT when they opened the side hatch to the vacuum of space.

For identification, Kononenko, call sign EV-1, is wearing an Orlan spacesuit with red stripes while Chub, EV-2, is using a suit with blue stripes. Both men are equipped with NASA helmet cameras.

The radiator in question was launched with the Russian Rassvet module aboard the space shuttle Atlantis in May 2010. The radiator and a small experiment airlock remained stored on Rassvet until earlier this year when spacewalking cosmonauts attached both to the Nauka multi-purpose laboratory module.

This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples of rocks and soil being collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech

The next decade will be a critical time for the exploration of Mars with the multi-agency Mars Sample Return (MSR) being the marquee mission. The undertaking has been decades in the making, but an independent review of the MSR architecture raised some key questions about the feasibility and cost.

An overview of that report and how NASA intends to respond to it was the focus of the fall meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) Steering Committee (SC). Members met virtually on Friday, Oct. 20, to discuss the findings.

“The entire planetary science community sees the value of sample return as a means of addressing high priority science in the solar system,” said Dr. Vicky Hamilton, the current SC chair and planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute. “And while the MSR may be the first mission that would demonstrate the feasibility of robotically selecting and returning samples, it’s not the only destination.”

“That said, independent of the scientific value of sample return, there are of course practical realities. And I think that’s really why we’re here today (Friday) and that is because doing sample return is hard,” Hamilton added. “There are technological hurdles, it’s going to cost more money than we’re accustomed to spending on the average Mars mission and there may be changes to what we’ve become used to as our Mars Exploration Program.”

MSR will rely on components from both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) among others. In May 2023, NASA established its second Independent Review Board (IRB-2) to comb through its portion of the plan and create a third-party evaluation of the costs, technical saliency and the schedule set forth by NASA to make it all happen.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket sends up 22 Starlink satellites on the Starlink Group 6-23 mission. Image: Adam Bernstein

SpaceX is hoping to ace its second launch of the day with another Falcon 9 rocket, this time launching from the East Coast. The Starlink Group 6-24 mission is targeting liftoff at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 UTC).

The mission will be 149th orbital launch for SpaceX from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the 58th launch from Florida’s Space Coast in 2023, breaking the record of 57 launches set last year.

Our live launch broadcast will start about one hour prior to launch.

SpaceX is launching on average once every four days. The company is aiming to ratchet up their launch cadence substantially in 2024, as it recently announced it would aim to launch 12 times per month or 144 times over the course of the year using its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

Saturday night’s launch will be the first time SpaceX has launched 23 of its Starlink V2 Mini satellites in one batch. The first-stage booster supporting the mission, tail number B1080, will be making its fourth flight after previously launching the Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and the Starlink Group 6-11 mission.

File photo of a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: SpaceX

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch 21 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:47 a.m. PDT (3:47 a.m. EDT, 0747 UTC). It is the first of two Starlink delivery missions planned for Saturday.

The Falcon 9 will set off on a south-easterly trajectory after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E). It will be SpaceX’s 22nd mission from the West Coast this year and its 75th orbital launch of 2023 overall.

Spaceflight Now will provide live video coverage in our Launch Pad Live stream.

The first stage booster is making its 16th flight. It previously launched the Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15 and ISI EROS C-3 missions, plus six Starlink delivery flights. After completing its main burn, lasting about two and a half minutes, the first stage will continue downrange to land on the drone ship ‘Of Course I still Love You’ stationed about 400 miles downrange (644km) in the Pacific Ocean offshore of Baja California.

Deployment of the 21 V2 Mini Starlink satellites will occur just over an hour after launch. The V2 Mini model is much larger than the previous V1.5 satellites. Equipped with upgraded antennae and larger solar panels, these next generation spacecraft can delivery four times the bandwidth of the previous satellites. This is the 28th launch of the V2 Minis since they were introduced in February this year.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifts off from West Texas on Thursday. Credit: Blue Origin

The three companies who have flown people to space and back, Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, joined two experts at a Congressional hearing to press for regulatory improvements, warning the U.S. risks losing its lead in spaceflight.

The 1.5-hour-long hearing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science was mainly focused on a regulatory framework called “Part 450,” which was designed to help streamline the process of issuing launch licenses under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which goes by the acronym AST.

The five witnesses argued that not only is the current regulatory framework not achieving its ideal goals, but it is stifling growth and innovation in the commercial launch market.

“I want to state clearly that AST is an outstanding and important organization that needs more resources and immediate regulatory direction from Congress,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability in his opening remarks. “AST’s role is critical to enabling safe space transportation, but we’re at a breaking point.”

“Licensing, including environmental approval, often takes longer than rocket development. This should never happen and it’s only getting worse,” he added.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket after Ship 25 was restacked on top of Booster 9 on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. The rocket was unstacked the following day. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX leadership is heading to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lobby for greater efficiency when it comes regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The company is hoping to streamline the process of issuing launch licenses for both Starship test flights and more routine Falcon 9 rocket missions.

Ahead of the hearing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told Spaceflight Now its regulatory approval process for the second Starship test flight could potentially last until the spring of 2024.

In a statement on Tuesday, a FWS spokesperson said their agency received a final biological assessment from the FAA in October and FWS has 30 days to review it. This came after the FAA sent FWS a letter in August, which requested “reinitiation of Endangered Species Act consultation.”

“Under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, reinitiation of formal consultation is required when a project and its impacts change significantly, the amount of take issued previously is exceeded, we have new information on listed species not previously considered, or a new species is listed,” the spokesperson said. “Reinitiation involving major changes in effects analysis or changes in the [FWS’] biological opinion are addressed fully in a new consultation. For SpaceX reinitiation with FAA, we are considering the operation of a water deluge system.”

That new deluge system was part of a list of 63 corrective actions created as part of the SpaceX-led mishap investigation following the failed launch of the first integrated flight test on April 20, 2023.

Update 11:53 a.m. EDT (1553 UTC): New T-0 launch time from SpaceX.

SpaceX is looking to follow up a double launch day on Friday, Oct. 13, with an evening launch of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will send up another 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to low Earth orbit.

The mission from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is targeting a liftoff at 7:52 p.m. EDT (2352 UTC) Tuesday. There is a backup launch opportunity at 8:36 p.m. EDT (0036 UTC on Oct. 18). There are also six backup opportunities on Wednesday, Oct. 18, ranging from 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 UTC) until 8:23 p.m. EDT (0023 UTC on Oct. 19).

The Starlink Group 6-23 mission comes just 4 days and 51 minutes following the last mission to launch from SLC-40, the Starlink Group 6-22 mission, which launched Friday evening at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 UTC).

With a successful launch on Tuesday evening, SpaceX will have completed its 74th launch of 2023. Put another way, that means it has launched on average once roughly every 3.92 days. The company also stated in a post at the weekend on the social media site X that following Friday’s Starlink launch, SpaceX has sent more than 900 metric tons to orbit this year.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 Starlink satellites, delayed by upper level winds and held up for the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Psyche, is scheduled to liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s pad 40 at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 UTC) on Friday night.

The U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, based at Cape Canaveral, on Thursday predicted a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather for the first of today’s launch opportunities which improves to 80 percent chance at the end of the window.

A launch attempt on Oct. 8 was aborted with just 23 seconds left on the clock. SpaceX said the delay was due to upper level winds. While a West Coast Starlink launch went ahead a few hours later, SpaceX put the Cape launch on hold at the request of NASA, which wanted to prioritize the Falcon Heavy launch of the Psyche asteroid mission, which launched earlier Friday.

SpaceX has five back up launch opportunities Friday if needed at 7:51 p.m. EDT (2351 UTC), 8:42 p.m. EDT (0042 UTC), 9:32 p.m. EDT (0132 UTC) 10:23 p.m. EDT (0223 UTC) and 10:29 p.m. EDT (0429 UTC). Should Friday night not work out, there are five additional opportunities on Saturday evening.

The Falcon 9 is carrying 22 second-generation satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service. The company announced recently that its now had more than two million subscribers for its broadband internet in more than 60 countries.

Falcon Heavy climbs away from Kennedy Space Center, carrying NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.

Getting off to a ground-shaking start, NASA’s $1.2 billion Psyche asteroid probe roared into space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket Friday, setting off on a 2.2-billion-mile voyage to a rare, metal-rich asteroid that may hold clues about how the cores of rocky planets like Earth first formed.

“We’re going to learn about a previously unstudied ingredient that went into making our habitable Earth, and that is the metal that is now in the Earth’s core and the cores of all of the rocky planets, cores that we can never visit but of course that we want to learn about,” said Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton.

“And Psyche is the single largest metallic object in our solar system. So if we want to learn about our cores, that’s where we need to go.”

Following multiple setbacks and delays in the wake of the Covid pandemic — and a 24-hour slip due to stormy weather Thursday — the Psyche mission finally got under way at 10:19 a.m. EDT when the SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s 27 first-stage engines ignited with a thundering rush of flaming exhaust.

After a final round of lightning-fast computer checks, the 230-foot-tall rocket was released from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, smoothly climbing away atop more than 5 million pounds of thrust.

Mission Status Center

The eighth Falcon Heavy to fly was raised to launch configuration overnight on Wednesday as it prepares to send the Psyche spacecraft off to the asteroid of the same name as early as Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Image: Adam Bernstein

With the exception of the weather, NASA and SpaceX said at a prelaunch news conference Wednesday everything was ready for the launch the Psyche mission at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 UTC) on Thursday, Oct. 12. on a seven-year mission to an asteroid of the same name.

Arlena Moses, the launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron, said the launch forecast for Thursday remains only 20 percent favorable for liftoff, but she said there were a couple elements that made her somewhat hopeful for a Thursday liftoff.

“It looks right now that warm front is going to be a little north of us as we go into the first part of tomorrow morning and what that’s going to kind of help us out with is that it should take a lot of the heaviest rainfall and best chances of storms north of us,” Moses said.

“However, we still will have a very unstable atmosphere, so there still may be some storms and rainfall around, probably lots of cloud cover, all of these things that we have concern for with our rocket launches and our lightning commit criteria,” she added.

Moses said that winds could pick up quickly out of the southwest of 20 to 25 miles per hour for the Thursday launch window. Looking at the 24-hour backup opportunity, there are lower winds of only 7 to 12 miles per hour and a 50 percent probability of ‘go’ weather.

File Photo of the Nauka module at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Shane Kimbrough

An apparent exterior coolant leak from a Russian laboratory module at the International Space Station has been reported by the crew. It follows similar leaks that struck a Russian Soyuz crew ferry craft and a Progress cargo ship within the past year.

This latest incident was reported by Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to NASA space station crew member Jasmin Moghbeli around 1 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC).

“We’re seeing flakes outside. Need a crew to go to the cupola, look toward the aft side, we think windows five or six, and confirm any visual flakes,” mission control requested.

Moghbeli, the commander of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission and current ISS flight engineer, said she would go check it out herself. She was asked if she could confirm the point of origin, since it was difficult to see that from the ground perspective.

“Yeah, there’s a leak coming from the radiator on the MLM,” Moghbeli said.