Space News & Blog Articles

EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated July 22 with Pirs undocking delay.

The International Space Station is set to receive its biggest expansion in more than a decade after the launch of a Russian research lab and a European robotic arm Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Russia’s Nauka, or “science,” research module lifted on top of a Proton rocket Wednesday to kick off an eight-day pursuit of the space station, culminating in an automated docking with the orbiting outpost July 29.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, says the Nauka module has a mass of about 20.2 metric tons (44,500 pounds) and extends about 43 feet (13 meters) long. It’s the first large pressurized element to be permanently added to the space station since  2011, and will become one of the biggest modules at the complex.

The launch from Baikonur occurred at 10:58:25 a.m. EDT (1458:25 GMT; 7:58:25 p.m. local time), about a half-hour before sunset at the historic Russian-managed spaceport in Central Asia.

Russia’s Nauka module undergoes launch preparations at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Roscosmos

A Russian science module in development for more than 20 years is set for liftoff Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Proton rocket, kicking off an eight-day flight to the International Space Station to boost the lab’s capacity for research.

The Nauka module is buttoned up on top of a Russian Proton rocket for liftoff at 10:58:25 a.m. EDT (1458:25 GMT) Wednesday from Baikonur, a historic launch base on the Kazakh steppe that has been the departure point for all the Russian space station elements.

Launch is scheduled for 7:58 p.m. local time at Baikonur, about a half-hour before sunset.

The three-stage, liquid-fueled rocket will take off from the Site 200 launch complex at Baikonur and head northeast to line up with the space station’s orbital plane.

Six RD-276 main engines, burning a toxic combination of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, will power the 197-foot-tall (60-meter) Proton rocket off the pad with 2.5 million pounds of thrust.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with the Nauka science module for the International Space Station. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

NASA TV’s live coverage of the launch begins at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) and is in English. Roscosmos’s live video stream begins at approximately 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) and is in Russian.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft moves in for docking at the zenith port on the space station’s Harmony module Wednesday. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now

Four astronauts rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for a flight from one International Space Station docking port to another Wednesday, clearing the way for arrival of a Boeing Starliner crew ferry ship on an unpiloted test flight later this month.

The relocation maneuver, performed with the spacecraft on autopilot, moved the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft from the forward port of the space station’s Harmony module to Harmony’s an upward-facing docking adapter.

Dragon commander Shane Kimbrough, pilot Megan McArthur, and mission specialists Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet put on their SpaceX pressure suits and took their seats inside the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft before an automated undocking from the forward port at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT).

All four crew members flew inside the Dragon spacecraft for the relocation operation Wednesday, just in case a major problem prevented the capsule from linking up with the space station again. Kimbrough’s crew launched aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft April 23 from Florida. They are scheduled to return to Earth in November.

During their mission lasting more than six months, Kimbrough’s crew would use the Dragon capsule as a lifeboat to escape the space station in an emergency. NASA did not want the astronauts on the space station without an escape pod if the Crew Dragon failed to redock with the complex.

Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk, and Mark Bezos pose with the New Shepard booster that carried them to space Tuesday. Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took his brother, a pioneering female pilot, and an 18-year-old Dutch student on an automated flight to the edge of space Tuesday, completing a on a 66-mile-high suborbital hop aboard his company’s New Shepard rocket, the latest achievement in a new era of billionaire-backed human spaceflight.

Jeff Bezos, joined by his younger brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and 18-year Dutch student Oliver Daemen boarded the New Shepard capsule just after sunrise at a privately-owned launch site north of Van Horn, Texas.

Wearing blue flight suits, the four-person crew rode in Rivian electric trucks from Blue Origin’s training center to the launch site, climbed the launch pad tower, and took their seats inside the spaceship sitting on top of a 60-foot-tall (19-meter) booster. After a smooth countdown, the New Shepard booster lit its hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine at 8:11 a.m. CDT (9:11 a.m. EDT; 1311 GMT).

The single stage New Shepard booster climbed away from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One and rocketed into a sunny sky, exceeding the speed of sound in about one minute before quickly accelerating through the stratosphere.

Here’s a replay of the launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket at 8:11am EDT (9:11am EDT; 1311 GMT).

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and crew capsule from West Texas carrying company founder Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen on a 10-minute flight to suborbital space. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Blue Origin’s live launch broadcast begins at 6:30 a.m. CDT (7:30 a.m. EDT; 1130 GMT) Tuesday, July 20.

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

Nine days after being upstaged by Richard Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is finally ready for his own flight into history, blasting off Tuesday morning aboard a fully automated spacecraft he believes will usher in a new era of commercial passenger service.

Reaching a slightly higher altitude than Branson’s winged spaceplane, Bezos’ New Shepard capsule is equipped with the largest windows ever built into a spacecraft, offering its briefly weightless passengers truly out-of-this-world views of planet Earth more than 62 miles below.

More important for the safety-conscious, perhaps, the capsule features a flight-tested abort system designed to quickly propel the ship and its passengers away from a malfunctioning booster.

Like Branson before him, Bezos’ presence aboard his New Shepard spacecraft is a public show of confidence in its readiness, after 15 successful but unpiloted test flights, to begin sub-orbital flights for wealthy space tourists and researchers flying at government or corporate expense.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft emerges from the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing facility early Saturday. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now

Boeing second Starliner crew ferry spacecraft rolled out of its factory early Saturday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for mounting on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket set for liftoff July 30 on a redo of a problem-plagued unpiloted test flight in 2019.

The human-rated spaceship, which has yet to be cleared to fly astronauts, emerged from Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility near NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building before dawn Saturday, riding a spacecraft transporter for the several-mile journey to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

ULA’s ground crew attached a four-point lifting sling for the overhead crane in the VIF to hoist the Starliner spacecraft atop the Atlas 5 rocket, which was already stacked on a mobile launch platform inside the vertical hangar.

Teams completed work to attach the spacecraft to the Atlas 5 rocket over the weekend, setting the stage for an integrated systems test, a “tip-to-tail” checkout of the entire vehicle.

Boeing is gearing up for the second unpiloted orbital test flight of a Starliner spacecraft, a redo of the company’s first Starliner demonstration mission in December 2019. Software problems prevented the spacecraft from docking with the International Space Station on that mission, resulting in a premature but successful landing of the capsule in New Mexico.

The Hubble Space Telescope pictured during the final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. Credit: NASA

NASA said Saturday that the Hubble Space Telescope, now running on a backup payload computer, has resumed scientific observations after a failure knocked the aging observatory offline for more than a month.

“All instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope are now in operational status, and science data is once again being collected to further our understanding of the universe,” NASA tweeted Saturday.

A failure traced to a power control unit associated with Hubble’s primary payload computer put the telescope’s science instruments in safe mode and suspended observations June 13.

“Hubble is an icon, giving us incredible insight into the cosmos over the past three decades,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “I’m proud of the Hubble team, from current members to Hubble alumni who stepped in to lend their support and expertise. Thanks to their dedication and thoughtful work, Hubble will continue to build on its 31-year legacy, broadening our horizons with its view of the universe.”

NASA said the first science observation with the newly-restored Hubble Space Telescope was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Most of the observations missed during the 34-day outage will be rescheduled for a later date, NASA saiid.

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

While Jeff Bezos and his three crewmates worked through a two-day “astronaut” training course, engineers Sunday tentatively cleared their New Shepard rocket and capsule for blastoff Tuesday on a 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space, matching rival Richard Branson’s feat nine days earlier.

Blue Origin, the space company Bezos founded two decades ago, plans to launch the company’s New Shepard rocket and crew capsule from its west Texas flight facility at 9 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

Liftoff will mark the 16th flight of a New Shepard sub-orbital spacecraft but the first with passengers on board. Joining Amazon-founder Bezos will be his brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutchman who is Blue Origin’s first paying customer.

“We’ve looked at all the vehicle systems including hardware, software, procedures and launch crew readiness,” Blue Origin Launch Director Steve Lanius told reporters Sunday. “We are not currently working any open issues and New Shepard is ready to fly.”



A new SpaceX drone ship named “A Shortfall of Gravitas” was towed into Port Canaveral Thursday, completing a shuffling of SpaceX’s rocket landing platforms to support upcoming launches from Florida and California.

“A Shortfall of Gravitas” was towed from a construction facility in Louisiana after completing an initial series of sea trials. SpaceX teams at Port Canaveral will finish readying the drone ship for offshore landings of Falcon rocket boosters.

The name of the new landing platform is a nod to “Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall,” a starship featured in the “Culture” science fiction novel series by the late Scottish author Iain M. Banks.

SpaceX’s two other drone ships are also named for sentient, planet-sized ships in Banks’ novels: “Just Read the Instructions” and “Of Course I Still Love You.”

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

An 18-year-old Dutch student will joint Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and aviation pioneer Wally Funk next Tuesday when they blast off aboard the Amazon founder’s New Shepard rocket for its first sub-orbital flight to space with passengers on board.

The launching will come just nine days after Richard Branson flew to space aboard his own sub-orbital rocketplane, highlighting the billionaire battle to turn the dream of regularly scheduled commercial passenger flights to space into a profit-making reality.

The still-anonymous winner of an auction who paid $28 million to join Bezos and company next week was forced to pass up the opportunity because of schedule conflicts and plans to fly on a downstream mission, Blue Origin said in a statement Thursday.

Taking his place will be Oliver Daemen, who participated in the auction with his father and secured a seat on the New Shepard’s second commercial flight. When the auction winner pulled out, Blue Origin offered the seat to Daemen, who will be “the first paying customer” to fly aboard a New Shepard spacecraft.

The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for NASA’s first Space Launch System test flight was stacked on top of the rocket July 5. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

The upper stage for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System was installed on top of the heavy-lift rocket earlier this month, moving the agency one step closer to liftoff of the Artemis 1 test mission to the moon.

Teams inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center lifted the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage on top of the SLS rocket stack July 5. The addition of the upper stage completed stacking of the propulsive elements for the first SLS mission, known as Artemis 1.

Last month, ground crews mounted the SLS core stage between the rocket’s two side-mounted solid-fueled boosters, which were stacked on a mobile launch platform inside the VAB earlier this year. Then teams added the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter, a conical structure that tapes from the larger diameter of the core stage to the smaller upper stage.

The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS, was built by United Launch Alliance and is based on the upper stage used on the company’s Delta 4-Heavy rocket. The ICPS will provide the boost to send NASA’s Orion crew capsule out of Earth orbit toward the moon on the Artemis 1 test flight.

No astronauts will fly on the Artemis 1 mission, but the test flight will pave the way for future piloted Artemis lunar missions, beginning with Artemis 2 scheduled for launch in 2023.

A Chinese Long March 6 rocket lifts off Friday from the Taiyuan space center. Credit: Xinhua

China launched five small satellites designed to detect and monitor global radio transmissions Friday on top of a Long March 6 rocket, joining five similar spacecraft deployed in orbit in 2019.

The five Ningxia, or Zhongzi, satellites rocketed into orbit on top of a 95-foot-tall (29-meter) Long March 6 booster that lifted off from the Taiyuan space center at 7:59 a.m. EDT (1159 GMT) Friday, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC.

The launch of the three-stage Long March 6 rocket occurred at 7:59 p.m. Beijing time. The kerosene-fueled rocket headed southeast from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China to place its five payloads into orbit.

U.S. military tracking data indicated the rocket deployed its payloads in an orbit at an altitude of about 535 miles (860 kilometers), with an inclination of 45 degrees to the equator.

The five satellites belong to a fleet owned by Ningxia Jingui Information Technology Co. Ltd., a company that provides radio spectrum monitoring services to commercial and Chinese government customers.

A Long March 3C rocket lifts off July 6 with China’s new Tianlian 1-05 data relay satellite. Credit: CASC

China launched a fresh satellite for the country’s Tianlian data relay network July 6, reinforcing a fleet of spacecraft designed to connect ground controllers with the country’s space station.

The Tianlian 1-05 data relay satellite launched at 11:53 a.m. EDT (1553 GMT) July 6 on a Long March 3C rocket from the Xichang space center in Sichuan province of southwestern China, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC.

CASC is China’s top state-owned aerospace contractor that oversees large swaths of the country’s space program.

The Long March 3C rocket took off at 11:53 p.m. Beijing time and headed east from the Xichang launch base. The 18-story rocket jettisoned its two hydrazine-fueled strap-on boosters about two minutes into the flight, followed moments later by separation of the rocket’s core stage.

The boosters and first stage fell back to Earth in Chinese territory as the Long March 3C continued into orbit powered by a hydrazine-fueled second stage and a hydrogen-fueled third stage.

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson rocketed into space Sunday, an edge-of-the-seat sub-orbital test flight intended to demonstrate his company’s air-launched spaceplane is ready for passengers who can afford the ultimate thrill ride.

And it appeared to do just that, zooming to an altitude just above 50 miles and giving Branson and his five crewmates about three minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views of Earth before plunging back into the atmosphere for a spiraling descent to touchdown at Virgin’s New Mexico launch site.

“I have dreamt of this moment since I was a kid but honestly, nothing could prepare you for the view of Earth from space,” Branson said after landing, at a rare loss for words. “It was just magical. … I’m just taking it all in, it’s unreal.”

The flight effectively upstaged Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, who plans a sub-orbital spaceflight of his own aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft on July 20 as the two companies compete for passengers in the emerging commercial space marketplace.

Live coverage of the flight of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity rocketplane carrying company founder Richard Branson and five crewmates to the edge of space. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Virgin Galactic’s live broadcast begins at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) Sunday, July 11.

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity rocketplane is released for a glide flight over New Mexico last year. Credit: Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic-founder Richard Branson and five company crewmates are set to take a barnstorming ride to space Sunday in a bold show of confidence in his company’s readiness to start carrying passengers on brief trips out of the atmosphere.

Beating rival Jeff Bezos to space by nine days, Branson and company expect to zoom higher than 50 miles in Virgin’s sleek spaceplane, experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness and out-of-this-world views before gliding back to landing at Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

It will be the fourth piloted spaceflight for Virgin’s VSS Unity spaceplane and its 22nd overall. But it will be the first with a crew of six on board and the first with Branson, a high-stakes demonstration of his long-standing commitment to launching private citizens into space.

It also demonstrates the high-stakes nature of the competition to be first in the emerging space tourism marketplace with Virgin Galactic competing head to head with Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for space tourism dollars.

After 15 unpiloted test flights, Bezos announced last month that he planned to fly aboard his company’s New Shepard spacecraft July 20 when it takes off on its first piloted flight to sub-orbital space. A few days later, Branson upstaged the Amazon founder, announcing he planned to take off nine days earlier.

A Cargo Dragon capsule backs away from the International Space station Thursday, heading for splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Thomas Pesquet/ESA/NASA

Wrapping up a 36-day mission to the International Space Station, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico Friday night with biomedical experiments, spacewalk equipment, and other hardware returning from orbit.

The unpiloted spacecraft made a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico south of Tallahassee, Florida, at 11:29 p.m. EDT Friday (0329 GMT Saturday).

SpaceX confirmed the capsule’s splashdown in a tweet as recovery teams converged on the Dragon spacecraft in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX’s “Go Navigator” recovery ship was on station near the splashdown zone to pull the capsule out of the sea.

Once the Dragon capsule is on the deck of the recovery ship, teams will open the hatch and retrieve time-sensitive research specimens for delivery by helicopter to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where scientists will begin analyzing the experiments.

The recovery ship will bring the capsule back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment and reuse on a future cargo mission.

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

After nearly two decades of overly optimistic forecasts, technical challenges, a tragic setback and a determined recovery, Richard Branson, the globe-trotting media mogul and founder of Virgin Galactic, plans to rocket into space Sunday, beating fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to the punch by nine days.

In a high-stakes display of confidence in Virgin’s sleek rocketplane, Branson wants to get an owner’s understanding of what his company is offering and in the process, convince potential customers that purely commercial, non-government flights to space are worth the initially astronomical cost.

And the risk.

“I believe that commercial space travel can become a profitable enterprise, but that is not the point,” he wrote in his most recent autobiography. “If I had merely wanted to make more money, I could have invested in far safer, more reliable sectors. I believe that putting our faith in space travel serves, quite literally, a higher purpose.”