Space News & Blog Articles

Astra’s launch vehicle, designated LV0006, stands on its launch mount at the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Credit: Astra

The private space company Astra plans its third orbital launch attempt from Alaska as soon as Friday, using a relatively compact two-stage launcher sized to haul small satellites into space.

The mission’s launch window opens at 5 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. Alaska time; 2100 GMT) Friday. If the mission doesn’t launch Friday, Astra has clearance to launch the mission through Sept. 11.

Astra is one of numerous private companies aiming to capture a segment of the fast-growing small satellite launch market, alongside operators like Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, Firefly Aerospace, and others.

But Astra’s initial class of rockets is smaller than the launchers fielded by competitors in the small launch segment. The next iteration of Astra’s launch vehicle line, called Rocket 3.3, stands 43 feet (13 meters) tall, modest by orbital launch vehicle standards.

But it’s around 5 feet taller than the rockets Astra used for its first two orbital launch attempts last year. With stretched first stage tanks to hold more propellant, and a lighter upper stage, the new rocket configuration can carry heavier cargo into orbit, according to Astra.

A Cargo Dragon capsule sits atop a Falcon 9 rocket on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

Forecasters on Friday predicted a 60% chance bad weather on Florida’s Space Coast could prevent the scheduled launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday to begin an automated resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The official launch weather forecast, issued by the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, predicts widespread cloud cover and scattered rain showers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center during an instantaneous launch opportunity at 3:37 a.m. EDT (0737 GMT).

If weather cooperates, a 215-foot-tall (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket will blast off from pad 39A at Kennedy, carrying a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule on a flight to the space station.

Earlier this week, SpaceX rolled the Falcon 9 launcher from its hangar out to pad 39A, then lifted the rocket vertical for final checkouts. SpaceX loaded the rocket with densified kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants for a 10-second test-firing of its Merlin 1D main engines at 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0100 GMT Thursday).

After completing the test-firing, SpaceX drained the rocket of propellant and started loading last-minute and time-sensitive cargo, such as fresh food and biological experiments, into the Cargo Dragon capsule using the access arm at pad 39A.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral with SpaceX’s 23rd operational Dragon resupply flight to the International Space Station. This is the third flight of SpaceX’s upgraded Cargo Dragon vehicle. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.



Blue Origin is set to launch its reusable New Shepard booster from West Texas on a suborbital flight to the edge of space Thursday on the company’s first launch since founder Jeff Bezos and three crewmates rocketed to altitude of 66 miles last month.

But this mission won’t carry people. Instead, Blue Origin says the single stage New Shepard booster set for launch Thursday is dedicated to flying research payloads.

Blue Origin’s launch team plans to load super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket early Thursday. Liftoff from Blue Origin’s test site north of Van Horn, Texas, is scheduled for 9:35 a.m. EDT (8:35 a.m. CDT; 1335 GMT).

The company delayed the New Shepard launch from Wednesday for unspecified reasons.

A Long March 3B rocket takes off with the TJS 7 satellite. Credit: CASC

China launched another military satellite Tuesday aboard a Long March 3B rocket, just four hours after liftoff of a different Chinese launcher with multiple prototype spacecraft for a planned constellation of orbiting internet relay nodes.

The TJS 7 satellite launched at 1541 GMT (11:41 a.m. EDT) Tuesday from the Xichang space center, a spaceport nestled amid a hilly region of Sichuan province in southwestern China.

The launch aboard a Long March 3B rocket, which occurred at 11:41 p.m. Beijing time, was the second Chinese space mission to ascend into orbit Tuesday. Earlier in the day, a Long March 2C rocket launched from the Jiuquan space center in northwestern China with a group of test satellites for a Chinese space-based broadband network.

The TJS 7 satellite rode its 184-foot-tall (56-meter) Long March 3B launcher into an elongated geostationary transfer orbit with a perigee, or low point, of 122 miles (197 kilometers) and an apogee, or high point, of 22,255 miles (35,816 kilometers). The rocket’s cryogenic upper stage deployed the TJS 7 spacecraft into an orbit inclined 28.5 degrees to the equator, according to U.S. military tracking data.

The satellite is expected to use its own propulsion system to circularize its orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator in the next few weeks. In geostationary orbit, the TJS 7 satellite’s velocity will match the rate of Earth’s rotation, giving the spacecraft the ability to remain over a fixed geographic position.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon spacecraft stand on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in florida on Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX

On the cusp of ending a two-month SpaceX launch drought, ground crews raised a Falcon 9 rocket vertical Wednesday on its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for an engine test-firing and final cargo loading before liftoff Saturday on a resupply flight to the International Space Station.

SpaceX rolled the Falcon 9 rocket out of its hangar near pad 39A at Kennedy late Tuesday night, then raised the launcher vertical on the seaside complex Wednesday.

The Falcon 9 rocket and its Cargo Dragon payload stand 215 feet (65 meters) tall, ready for a practice countdown scheduled as soon as Wednesday evening. SpaceX’s launch team will load densified, super-chilled kerosene and liquid oxygen into the two-stage rocket and light its nine Merlin 1D main engines for several seconds for a pre-flight test-firing.

If the test-firing goes well, SpaceX is expected to clear the automated cargo mission for launch at 3:37 a.m. EDT (0737 GMT) Saturday. It will be the company’s 21st Falcon 9 launch of the year, and the first since June 30, an unusually long gap between SpaceX missions, at least in recent history.

SpaceX has paused launches of its Starlink internet satellites to complete development of new laser link terminals designed to allow the spacecraft to beam broadband signals to one another in orbit. The Starlink missions made up the lion’s share of the Falcon 9 launches in the first half of the year.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We are streaming a live view of pad 41 as ULA rolls out a Vulcan pathfinder booster for cryogenic tanking tests.



United Launch Alliance is rolling a test article for its new Vulcan rocket to a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Wednesday, moving the booster into position for a series of cryogenic tanking tests set to begin in the coming days.

The 110-foot-tall (33.5-meter) Vulcan first stage is riding a mobile launch platform along rail tracks from ULA’s Spaceflight Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to pad 41, a seaside launch complex teams have modified to support Vulcan missions and continued flights of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket.

The Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle, which will ultimately replace ULA’s Atlas and Delta rocket families, is scheduled to lift off for the first time next year. Blue Origin’s delivery of flight-ready BE-4 first stage engines is driving the schedule for the first Vulcan test flight.

A Long March 2C with, with an enlarged payload fairing, lifts off Tuesday from the Jiuquan space base. Credit: CASC

China launched two test payloads Tuesday for a planned constellation of internet satellites, a step that could lead to launches of thousands more Chinese spacecraft to match similar commercial networks already being deployed by SpaceX and OneWeb.

The two pathfinder spacecraft launched aboard a Long March 2C rocket, which flew for the first time with a wider payload fairing to provide more volume for launches of larger numbers of satellites on a single mission.

The Long March 2C rocket lifted off at 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT; 7:15 p.m. Beijing time) Tuesday from the Jiuquan launch base in the Inner Mongolia region of northwestern China, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC, the country’s top state-owned space contractor.

U.S. military tracking data indicated the rocket’s Yuanzheng 1S upper stage delivered the two satellites, known by the Chinese acronym RSW, into an orbit about 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) above Earth with an inclination of 89.4 degrees to the equator.

An unidentified third satellite, also with a communications tech demo mission, was also on-board the Long March 2C rocket.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

A planned spacewalk outside the International Space Station Tuesday was postponed after NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei was diagnosed with a pinched nerve, which NASA described as a “minor medical issue.”

Vande Hei planned to head outside the space station Tuesday with Japanese crewmade Akihiko Hoshide for a nearly seven-hour spacewalk to install a support bracket and modification kit that will enable the attachment of upgraded solar arrays set to arrive on a future cargo mission.

The astronauts also planned to replace a floating point measurement unit, a device that measures the electrical charging potential of the space station solar arrays.

NASA announced the postponement of the spacewalk Monday, describing Vande Hei’s condition as a “minor medical issue” and not a medical emergency.

‘The spacewalk is not time-sensitive and crew members are continuing to move forward with other station work and activities,” NASA said.

Fire and exhaust from the 32 rocket engine nozzles power a Soyuz-2.1b launcher off the ground at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Roscosmos

Another 34 satellites for OneWeb’s internet network successfully launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket Saturday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, giving the UK-based company a fleet of 288 spacecraft.

The latest batch of OneWeb satellites, manufactured in an assembly line factory on Florida’s Space Coast, took off from Baikonur aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket at 6:13:40 p.m. EDT (2213:40 GMT) Saturday.

The Soyuz rocket’s four kerosene-fueled boosters and core stage powered the launcher off the Site 31 complex at Baikonur with nearly a million pounds of thrust.

Two minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz shed its four first stage boosters to fall into a drop zone north of Baikonur. Nearly five minutes into the mission, the rocket jettisoned its core stage and ignited a third stage to continue the climb into orbit. Moments later, the Soyuz released its two-piece clamshell payload fairing after ascending above the dense, lower layers of the atmosphere.

The Soyuz third stage shut down as planned more than nine minutes after liftoff, and deployed a Russian-made Fregat upper stage to conduct a pair of main engine burns to reach a planned polar orbit 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth.

Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming wave to a video camera while outside the Tianhe core module of China’s space station Friday. Credit: Xinhua

Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming accomplished a nearly six-hour spacewalk Friday outside the core module of the country’s new space station, installing a coolant pump and lifting a panoramic camera to provide better views outside the complex.

Nie and Liu exited the airlock of the Tianhe core module at 8:38 p.m. EDT Thursday (0038 GMT Friday), according to the China Manned Space Agency.

The two astronauts completed their planned tasks supporting the assembly of the Tiangong space station, Chinese officials said.

One of the highlights of the spacewalk was the the installation of a backup “extended pump set” to help flow liquid coolant through a thermal control system loop regulating temperatures inside the space station. The coolant dissipates heat generated by equipment inside the outpost, and helps ensure steady and comfortable temperatures throughout the station.

Nie and Liu accomplished four steps to complete mechanical and fluid connections with the new pump, the China Manned Space Agency said.



After valve problems caused it to miss an opportunity to launch earlier this month on a test flight to the International Space Station, Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule returned to a processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday after being removed from its Atlas 5 launcher at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

United Launch Alliance detached the Starliner spacecraft from the top of its Atlas 5 rocket Thursday inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral.

A crane lowered the capsule onto a road transporter to ferry the spaceship back to Boeing’s processing facility near the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, where engineers plan to resume troubleshooting stuck valves that prevented the Starliner from launching Aug. 3 on an unpiloted demonstration flight to the space station.

Boeing officials said last week they would give up on fixing the valves while the spacecraft remained on top of its Atlas 5 launcher, a decision prompted by scheduling constraints in the next couple of months, both at the space station and on ULA’s launch manifest at Cape Canaveral.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with 34 OneWeb broadband satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Arianespace’s live video stream begins at approximately 6:10 p.m. EDT (2210 GMT) and is in English. Roscosmos’s live video stream begins at approximately 5:20 p.m. EDT (2120 GMT) and is in Russian.

A Long March 4B rocket launches a pair of Tianhui 2 mapping satellites. Credit: CASC

China launched a Long March 4B rocket Wednesday carrying two Tianhui radar mapping satellites into orbit more than 300 miles in altitude.

The two satellites will join a similar pair of spacecraft launched in April 2019, working in tandem to bounce radar beams off Earth’s surface to generate detailed three-dimensional global maps.

The satellite mapping system uses a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar to gather stereo data for 3D topographic maps. The data will be used by Chinese military and civilian agencies.

The two new Tianhui 2 satellites, known as the Tianhui 2-02 pair, took off at 6:32 p.m. EDT (2232 GMT) Wednesday from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China’s Shanxi province atop a Long March 4B rocket.

Liftoff occurred at 6:32 a.m. Thursday Beijing time, kicking off China’s 29th orbital launch attempt of the year.

Maxar’s WorldView 3 satellite captured this view of Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday, Aug. 16. The view shows crowds gathered around parked aircraft. Credit: Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Technologies

Maxar’s WorldView 3 commercial imaging satellite captured overhead views of the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, earlier this week as thousands of people converged on the runway and gathered near aircraft after the Taliban militants took control of the capital city.

The high-resolution images, captured at 10:36 a.m. Kabul time on Monday, Aug. 16, show crowds gathered in normally restricted areas on the airport’s aprons. One cropped view released by Maxar showed people on the runway, with military or security vehicles parked nearby.

Thousands of people rushed to Hamid Karzai International Airport after the Taliban militant group entered Kabul over the weekend. Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

U.S. and allied forces continued evacuating their citizens this week in the final chapter of a nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan. The Biden administration aims to complete the evacuation, which is expected to include thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. war effort, by Aug. 31.

The WorldView 3 spacecraft that took the images launched in April 2014 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The satellite was built by Ball Aerospace, and its optical Earth-imaging instrument has a maximum resolution of 12 inches (31 centimeters).

A European Vega rocket blasts off with nearly 700,000 pounds of thrust Monday night. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

A European Vega rocket launched from French Guiana Monday night with Airbus’s second Pléiades Neo remote sensing satellite, two European Space Agency CubeSats to track space weather, a student-built nanosatellite from Italy, and a small maritime surveillance payload from the French company Unseenlabs.

The Vega rocket’s solid-fueled booster stage ignited and vaulted the 98-toot-tall (30-meter) launcher off the pad at the Guiana Space Center in South America at 9:47:06 p.m. EDT Monday (0147:06 GMT Tuesday).

Heading north from the tropical spaceport, the Vega rocket exceeded the speed of sound in less than 30 seconds and shed its spent first stage about two minutes after liftoff. Two more solid-fueled motors fired in succession to send the mission’s five payloads into space.

The rocket’s Swiss-made payload shroud jettisoned after the initial climb above Earth’s atmosphere.

A liquid-fueled upper stage, known as the Attitude and Vernier Upper Module, ignited two times to maneuver the Pléiades Neo 4 spacecraft into its targeted polar orbit at an altitude of roughly 388 miles (625 kilometers). The satellite separated from the AVUM upper stage about 54-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.

Artist’s illustration of the CAPSTONE spacecraft near the moon. Credit: NASA/Rocket Lab/Advanced Space/Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems

The launch of a miniature trailblazer probe for NASA’s planned Gateway lunar space station has been moved from Rocket Lab’s new launch pad in Virginia to the company’s spaceport in New Zealand, officials recently announced.

NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, mission will test deep space navigation and communications technology in the vicinity of the moon. CAPSTONE will also demonstrate maneuvers to enter and operate in a near rectilinear halo orbit, an elliptical orbit around the moon that will be home to the Gateway, a critical piece of NASA’s architecture to return humans to the lunar surface.

The Gateway is a mini-space station NASA intends to use as a staging point for crewed lunar landings later in the 2020s.

Rocket Lab won a $9.95 million NASA contract in February 2020 to launch the CAPSTONE mission aboard the company’s Electron rocket, with an extra boost from Rocket Lab’s Photon propulsion platform to send the small spacecraft toward the moon.

At the time, NASA and Rocket Lab said CAPSTONE would take off from a new Electron launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, in early 2021. Rocket Lab announced Aug. 6 that CAPSTONE is now slated to launch from the company’s operational launch base on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand in the fourth quarter of 2021.



These images show the liftoff of a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket on Aug. 10 from Wallops Island, Virginia, kicking off an unpiloted resupply mission carrying more than 8,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station.

A 139-foot-tall (42.5-meter) Antares rocket lifted off at 6:01 p.m. EDT (2201 GMT) on Aug. 10 from pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, co-located with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Twin RD-181 engines powered the Antares launcher off the ground with 864,000 pounds of thrust. The mission carried a Cygnus supply ship into orbit in pursuit of the International Space Station, where it arrived Aug. 12.

The launch marked the 15th flight of an Antares rocket since 2013. Read our full story for details on the launch.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Vega rocket with Airbus’s Pléiades Neo 4 commercial Earth observation satellite and four secondary payloads. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Arianespace’s live video webcast begins at approximately 0130 GMT (9:30 p.m. EDT), and will be available on this page.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket emerges from a hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Monday for rollout to Site 31. Credit: Roscosmos

A Russian Soyuz rocket rolled out to a launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome Monday, moving into position for liftoff Thursday with 34 more satellites for OneWeb’s broadband internet network.

Ground teams transferred the Soyuz-2.1b rocket from its hangar, known by the Russian acronym MIK, to the Site 31 launch complex at Baikonur.

With a Fregat upper stage and 34 OneWeb satellites enclosed in its payload fairing, the Soyuz launcher rode a rail car to the launch pad at the Russian-operated spaceport in Kazakhstan. Once at the pad, the rocket was raised vertical and gantry arms rotated into position around the launcher.

Work planned over the next few days include final inspections of the launch vehicle, configuring of the first stage engine ignitor system, and removal of the thermal blanket covering the Soyuz payload fairing.

On Thursday, Russian managers are expected to give approval to load kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Soyuz rocket. The countdown Thursday will target liftoff at 6:23 p.m. EDT (2223 GMT).