Space News & Blog Articles

Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography

A private helicopter flew into restricted airspace near Cape Canaveral moments before the scheduled liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday. SpaceX chief Elon Musk said the keep out zone for launches is “unreasonably gigantic” and called for updated regulations.

The Federal Aviation Administration clears commercial and private aircraft from safety zones around rocket launches. For missions departing from Cape Canaveral, the U.S. Space Force also plays a role in ensuring public safety.

SpaceX was set to launch a Falcon 9 rocket at 2:56 p.m. EDT (1856 GMT) Tuesday to begin the company’s Transporter 2 rideshare mission with 88 small satellites.

But the Space Force’s range safety officer declared the range as “no go” for launch less than a minute before liftoff. The countdown stopped at T-minus 11 seconds, and SpaceX announced the launch was scrubbed for the day a few minutes later.

“Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone,’ which is unreasonably gigantic,” Musk tweeted. “There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken.”

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket. The air-launched rocket will climb into orbit with seven small satellites after release from a Boeing 747 carrier aircraft southwest of Los Angeles. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Virgin’s live webcast begins at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT; 1230 GMT).

Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket under the wing of the company’s Boeing 747 carrier jet at Mojave Air and Space Port. Credit: Virgin Orbit

On the heels of its first successful orbital launch in January, Virgin Orbit is gearing up for its first operational mission Wednesday with a flight of its air-launched rocket off the coast of California to deploy seven small satellites.

Virgin Orbit, founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, has a launch window of roughly two hours Wednesday to release the LauncherOne rocket to fire into orbit.

“We have completed our L-minus one day preflight briefing from our pilots, and the system is green for launch,” said Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit’s CEO, in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “So we are good to go at this time.”

Early Wednesday, ground crews at Mojave Air and Space Port in California plan to load kerosene and liquid oxygen into Virgin Orbit’s two-stage rocket mounted under the left wing of the company’s Boeing 747 carrier aircraft.

After final closeouts and pre-flight checks, the 747 flight crew will taxi to the end of the runway and depart from Mojave for an hour-long cruise to the mission’s drop point just southwest of the Channel Islands.

EDITOR’S NOTE: NASA TV’s live launch coverage in English begins at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). The Roscosmos webcast in Russian begins at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).

A Russian Progress supply ship is set to launch Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, commencing a two-day chase of the International Space Station with more than 5,000 pounds of fuel, water, spare parts, and experiments.

The Progress MS-17 cargo freighter is mounted on top of a Soyuz-2.1a rocket for liftoff from Baikonur at 7:27:20 p.m. EDT (2327:20 GMT) Tuesday to kick off the trip to the space station.

Launch is set for 4:27 a.m. Wednesday local time at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a historic spaceport operated by the Russian government on the steppes of Kazakhstan. That is about a half-hour before sunrise at the launch base.

Thomas Pesquet moves the new solar array to the P6 truss for installation. Image: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and NASA crewmate Shane Kimbrough floated back outside the International Space Station Friday and deployed a 60-foot-long roll-out solar array, the second of six new blankets being installed to upgrade the lab’s power system and offset age-related degradation.

“It looks like the deployment is complete,” Pesquet radioed, watching the array unroll itself six hours after the spacewalk began. “The motion has stopped.”

After adjusting the tension on the new array, the astronauts collected their tools and made their way back to the space station’s Quest airlock, wrapping up a six-hour 45-minute excursion.

The first two ISS roll-out solar arrays, or iROSAs, were delivered to the lab complex aboard as SpaceX Dragon cargo ship on June 5. The astronauts originally planned to install them in a pair of spacewalks, but it took two outings, one on June 16 and another on June 20, to get the first new array installed.

That panel was mounted on a fixture at the base of an existing solar wing on the far left, port 6 segment of the station’s power truss. The P6 truss segment supports the lab’s two oldest wings, feeding electricity into two of the lab’s eight major power circuits: 2B and 4B.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and NASA crewmate Shane Kimbrough floated back outside the International Space Station Friday and deployed a 60-foot-long roll-out solar array, the second of six new blankets being installed to upgrade the lab’s power system and offset age-related degradation.

“It looks like the deployment is complete,” Pesquet radioed, watching the array unroll itself six hours after the spacewalk began. “The motion has stopped.”

After adjusting the tension on the new array, the astronauts collected their tools and made their way back to the space station’s Quest airlock, wrapping up a six-hour 45-minute excursion.

The first two ISS roll-out solar arrays, or iROSAs, were delivered to the lab complex aboard as SpaceX Dragon cargo ship on June 5. The astronauts originally planned to install them in a pair of spacewalks, but it took two outings, one on June 16 and another on June 20, to get the first new array installed.

That panel was mounted on a fixture at the base of an existing solar wing on the far left, port 6 segment of the station’s power truss. The P6 truss segment supports the lab’s two oldest wings, feeding electricity into two of the lab’s eight major power circuits: 2B and 4B.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rocket fires its engines for an on-pad test-firing Tuesday at Cape Canaveral. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now

SpaceX said Thursday it has postponed the next launch of a Falcon 9 rocket, previously scheduled for Friday at Cape Canaveral, due to unspecified technical concerns. The Falcon 9 will launch on a commercial rideshare mission with more than 80 small satellites.

In a tweet, SpaceX said its team would take “additional time for pre-launch check outs.” The company released no additional details, but added it will announce a new target launch date once it is confirmed.

Two customers with satellites on the mission said Monday was a tentative new target launch date for the mission, which SpaceX calls Transporter 2.

The Transporter 2 mission is SpaceX’s second dedicated small satellite rideshare mission, following the launch of the Transporter 1 mission in January. The Transporter 1 mission delivered 143 small satellites to a sun-synchronous polar orbit, while Transporter 2 is expected to carry around 88 spacecraft into a similar orbit.

The payloads include small satellites for the U.S. military, plus radar and optical Earth observation satellites for Satellogic and ICEYE, commercial remote sensing companies based in Argentina and Finland. There are also numerous CubeSats on-board the launch for U.S. and international operators.

The Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter is lowered on top of the Space Launch System core stage inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

NASA has stacked the next piece of the agency’s first Space Launch System moon rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, adding an adapter structure to connect the launch vehicle’s core stage and upper stage, which is scheduled to be installed next week.

Ground crews inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center connected the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter, or LVSA, on top of the SLS core stage Tuesday inside High Bay 3 after lifting the structure across the VAB by crane.

The LVSA is the structural interface between the SLS core stage with the rocket’s Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or upper stage. The element was built at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, under the management of prime contractor Teledyne Brown Engineering.

The cone-shaped adapter has a height of about 30 feet, or 9 meters, and tapers from the top of the 27.6-foot-diameter (8.4-meter) core stage to the base of the 16.8-foot-diameter (5.1-meter) upper stage. The LVSA will also help protect the upper stage’s RL10 engine during the early minutes of the SLS launch, before the RL10 fires to send an Orion capsule on a trajectory toward the moon.

Before the stacking of the LVSA this week, ground teams mounted the 212-foot-tall (65-meter) Boeing-built SLS core stage between the rocket’s twin solid-fueled boosters. That milestone was completed June 13.

A Falcon 9 rocket descends to a touchdown at Landing Zone 1 after a launch in August 2020. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on a southerly coast-hugging trajectory from Cape Canaveral Tuesday to place 88 small satellites into a polar orbit. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster will return to Florida’s Space Coast for the first onshore rocket landing at Cape Canaveral since December.

The Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral during a 58-minute launch window opening at 2:56 p.m. EDT (1856 GMT) Tuesday. SpaceX postponed the launch from last week to perform additional additional pre-flight checkouts, but the company did not offer any further explanation for the delay.

SpaceX test-fired a previously-flown Falcon 9 booster last Tuesday in preparation for the Transporter 2 small satellite rideshare mission.

There’s an 80% chance of acceptable weather at Cape Canaveral for launch Tuesday.

According to SpaceX, the Transporter 2 mission will launch 88 small spacecraft to orbit for customers around the world. SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare mission, Transporter 1, launched in January with 143 small satellites, a record number of individual spacecraft on a single launch.



Russia’s military launched the first of a new type of ship-locating radar imaging satellite Friday aboard a Soyuz rocket.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said the Soyuz-2.1b rocket took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, located about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow, at 3:50 p.m. EDT (1950 GMT) Friday.

Heading northeast from Plesetsk, the Soyuz released its four liquid-fueled first stage boosters about two minutes after liftoff. The rocket later jettisoned its central core stage and payload shroud, leaving a third stage engine to place the military payload into orbit.

Russian defense officials said the rocket successfully deployed the military satellite into orbit. U.S. military tracking data confirmed the mission put the spacecraft into an orbit ranging in altitude between 121 miles (195 kilometers) and 289 miles (466 kilometers).

One of InSight’s solar arrays, on the left, is covered in dust in this picture taken in May. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Without a fortuitous whirlwind to clear dust off its solar panels, NASA’s InSight lander could end its mission on Mars within a year due to dropping power levels, the project’s chief scientist said last week.

“We have a two-year extended mission which should take us to the end of calendar year 2022 if we can stay alive that long on Mars,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator.

InSight landed on Mars in November 2018 on a mission to measure seismic activity and study the Red Planet’s deep interior. Despite some snags with one of its two primary instruments, InSight has met all of its top-level mission objectives, Banerdt said in a June 21 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group.

InSight’s two-year primary mission ended at the end of 2020, and NASA approved a two-year extension to continue the mission’s measurements.

Banerdt said the spacecraft is “experiencing some pretty severe solar energy issues” after dust accumulated on the solar arrays. The solar power crunch is “limiting our ability to take science measurements and is likely to eventually cause the end of the mission,” he said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: NASA TV’s live coverage of the Cygnus spacecraft’s departure from the International Space Station begins at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT).



A Cygnus spacecraft owned by Northrop Grumman will depart the International Space Station Tuesday, concluding a four-month mission that delivered more than 8,000 pounds of cargo. The automated resupply freighter will deploy five small CubeSats before re-entering the atmosphere and burning up over the Pacific Ocean.

Ground controllers will command the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm to release the Cygnus spacecraft at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) Tuesday. NASA astronaut Megan McArthur will monitor the spacecraft’s departure from inside the space station.

The Cygnus spacecraft arrived at the space station Feb. 22, two days after launching on an Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia. After capturing the Cygnus spacecraft, the robotic arm maneuvered the ship to the nadir, or Earth-facing, port on the space station’s Unity module.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission will launch 88 small satellites on the Transporter 2 rideshare mission. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

EDITOR’S NOTE: SpaceX’s live webcast begins about 15 minutes prior to liftoff. Until then, you can watch live views of the Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad by selecting the “SFN Live” tab.

The Defense Department’s Space Development Agency envisions deploying a constellation of hundreds of small satellites called the “Transport Layer” for global communications, data relay, and targeting. Credit: Space Development Agency

The first five payloads from the Space Development Agency, an organization charged with rapidly infusing emerging technologies into the U.S. military’s space programs, are among more than 80 satellites awaiting launch from Cape Canaveral Tuesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Established in 2019, the Space Development Agency plans to deploy hundreds of small satellites to enable improved communications for the U.S. military. SDA’s strategy leans on the rapid development of new commercial space technology, including new types of sensors and cheaper, easier-to-produce small satellites that can be deployed in large constellations in low Earth orbit.

SDA plans to launch the first tranche of 28 satellites to provide initial infrared missile detection and low-latency data relay services in late 2022 and early 2023. Twenty of those satellites, part of the “transport layer,” will be developed by Lockheed Martin and York Space Systems for communications support. The other eight “tracking” satellites will be supplied by SpaceX and L3Harris for missile detection and tracking.

The agency’s first technology demonstration satellites are stacked on top of a Falcon 9 rocket on the Transporter 2 rideshare mission set for liftoff at 2:56 p.m. EDT (1856 GMT) Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

“Right now, we’re in the ready to fly stage for our demonstrations,” said Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency, in a June 22 panel discussion at the Defense One Tech Summit. “In just a few short days, we will launch five demonstration satiates, and these are in conjunction with partners.”