Space News & Blog Articles

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, named ‘Odysseus,’ displayed prior to encapsulation inside a pair of SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairings. Image: SpaceX

Update 11:05 p.m. EST: SpaceX and Intuitive Machines scrubbed the launch attempt for Wednesday morning.

A launch pad billed as the Apollo program’s “Moonport” is once again preparing to send off a mission bound for the Moon. More than 50 years after Apollo 17, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket aims to launch Intuitive Machines’ robotic Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, on a lunar journey Wednesday morning.

The mission, dubbed IM-1, has a 15-second launch window that opens at 1:05 a.m. EST (0605 UTC) at Launch Complex 39A. It will kick off a roughly eight-day journey to the Moon, culminating in a landing late in the day on Feb. 22.

IM-1 will be the second flight for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. NASA purchased space for six scientific instruments at a cost of just under $118 million. The agency spent about $11 million to design and build the instruments.

Among those are cameras that will help create a 3D rendering of the dust kicked up at landing, a tech demonstration that will help with future landing accuracy and sensor that uses radio waves to detect how much propellant is inside the lander.

The inaugural Vulcan rocket, powered by two Blue Origin-built BE-4 engines, lifts off from SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Jan. 8, 2024. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

United Launch Alliance entered an important new era for the company with the debut of its Vulcan rocket in early January. The flight was one that was highly anticipated by those both inside and outside ULA and, by all metrics, it was a highly successful mission for ULA.

To mark a month after this inaugural launch, Spaceflight Now sat down with ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno for a discussion about that first certification flight and the year ahead for the company and the rocket.

“This was the cleanest first flight I’ve ever seen. I’ve personally been involved with about three dozen of them,” Bruno said. Prior to his time with ULA, Bruno was the vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Strategic and Missile Defense Systems.

Bruno was among the launch team on console during the countdown, which was run from the Advanced Spaceflight Operations Center (ASOC) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. He said the lack of issues during the countdown threw him for a loop at times.

“It was a very clean countdown. Not an exaggeration, true story, there’s probably 25 minutes or so, I’m sitting on console, silence and I thought my headset was busted,” Bruno said. “I’m like, ‘Maddie, find IT, my headset is broken.’ They come back, ‘No, Tory, there’s literally nothing happening. It’s just that quiet.’”

A long exposure shows the Falcon 9 climbing to orbit and the first-stage entry and landing burns. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX launched an environmental research satellite for NASA early Thursday, a nearly $1 billion spacecraft that survived multiple cancellation threats and is now poised to shed new light on climate change and the complex interplay of heat-trapping carbon, aerosols and sea life on global scales.

The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission — PACE — “will dramatically advance our understanding of the relationship between aerosols and clouds, and the global energy balance,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth sciences division. “This is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in our ability to model the climate.”

She said PACE is “going to teach us about the oceans in the same way that Webb (the James Webb Space Telescope) is teaching us about the cosmos.” And that includes “a tremendous amount about ocean biology.”

“This is going to really center around understanding phytoplankton, these very small (organisms) that live in the ocean, that are at the foundation of life in our oceans in general.”

Oceans cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface, she added, “and yet the oceans are one of the least well understood parts of the Earth system. PACE is going to profoundly advance our understanding of how the oceans work and how life in the oceans is related to life on land.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base supporting the Starlink 7-13 mission. Image: SpaceX

Update 8:00 p.m. EST: SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket and recovered the first stage booster on a droneship.

SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from the West Coast following multiple weather-related scrubs earlier in the week. The rocket supporting the Starlink 7-13 mission lifted off at 4:34 p.m. PST (7:34 p.m. EST, 0034 UTC) on Friday, February 9.

During the first launch attempt on Tuesday evening, launch teams for the Starlink 7-13 mission got down to the final minute of the countdown before calling a scrub. Following a brief stint where they were targeting launch on Wednesday, SpaceX updated the planned launch of the mission  Thursday, Feb. 8. But excessive cloud cover forced them to stand down on Thursday as well.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster for this launch, tail number B1071, will be making its 14th flight. It most recently supported the Starlink 7-8 launch on Dec. 8, 2023.

About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1071 will land on the SpaceX droneship, “Of Course I Still Love You,’ which is staged out in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 82nd landing on OCISLY and the 211th droneship landing.

The Falcon 9 with NASA’s PACE mission atop stands ready for launch at pad 40. Image: SpaceX.

Update 2:30 a.m. EST: SpaceX and NASA confirm a successful launch.

SpaceX launched its second NASA mission of the year on Thursday morning. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Earth-observing spacecraft PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) lifted off at 1:33 a.m. EST (0633 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Feb. 8.

This was the eighth launch from Florida in 2024 and the seventh for SpaceX from the Space Coast this year.

The PACE launch was the first time a U.S. government mission had targeted a polar orbit from Cape Canaveral in more than 60 years. Polar flights were suspended after a cow in Cuba was killed by falling debris from a failed launch in 1960, sparking protests in Havana.

“At that point, we as a government decided, let’s just take all our polar launch missions to the West and we’ve successfully launched into the polar orbit hundreds of times since the 60s from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California,” said Tim Dunn, the senior launch director for NASA’s Launch Services Program.

NASA’s PACE spacecraft inside a clean room at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, FL. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

From the oceans to the atmosphere, there’s still quite a bit we don’t understand about our planet. NASA’s latest Earth-observing spacecraft hopes to greatly expand our knowledge of the globe in just a few years.

The PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) spacecraft is the next payload to launch into orbit that will build upon more than 20 years of direct Earth observation. Dr. Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, described the spacecraft as a “jewel” among the Earth-observing fleet.

“We have a theme in SMD of the search for life elsewhere. And so, we’re obviously excited by bringing the samples back from Bennu, going off and getting ready to launch Europa Clipper later this year to explore the ocean world of Europa, but PACE allows us to explore the ocean world here,” Fox said.

“And if you think that we’re the only planet right now that we know that sustains life and all of the life that we have here started in the oceans. And so, by studying the oceans and studying what’s in there and kind of learning about that, I actually think it’s a really key part of understanding how we would ever go about finding life, or signatures of life, on other worlds.”

After it launches, PACE will head to a 676.5 km (420 mi) orbital altitude with a 98 degree inclination. It will operate in a sun synchronous, polar orbit with 1300 local crossing time. It has a design life of three years, but it carries up to ten years worth of fuel.

For the first time, Sierra Space mated its Dream Chaser spaceplane to the Shooting Star module amid shake table testing at NASA’s Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

An orbital-class spaceplane is one step closer to returning to the International Space Station. As part of an on-going test campaign, Sierra Space mated its Dream Chaser spaceplane to its Shooting Star module for the first time at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio.

The spaceplane will be the third and final cargo spacecraft contracted by NASA to shuttle supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contact. In 2016, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space and SpaceX were awarded several flights each under the agreement that had a maximum value of $14 billion.

“It brings all of us at Sierra Space a great sense of pride and a profound reflection that what we are doing is truly important,” said Tom Vice, the CEO of Sierra Space. “The work we are doing will change everything and it will lay new footsteps for the next generation to follow.”

The company faced several years of development delays in getting Dream Chaser to this point. But recently, the spaceplane, dubbed ‘Tenacity,’ began its final slate of testing before it’s shipped down to Florida for launch.

“We are coming out of years of development, years of hard work, years of resolving really tough engineering challenges that come from revolutionizing the way we do things,” Vice said. “And we are really excited that this year we enter orbital operations for NASA. It is a year that we change how we connect Earth and space.”

Collins Aerospace tested its next generation spacesuit during a recent parabolic flight. This was part of its Crew Capability Assessment. Image: Collins Aerospace

Astronauts who work onboard the U.S. side of the International Space Station are one step closer to getting new spacesuits.

On Tuesday, teams with Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, completed a testing series called the Crew Capability Assessment. This is one of several milestones laid in NASA’s Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) contract valued at $97.2 million and awarded to Collins in December 2022.

Collins is designing its suit in collaboration with ILC Dover and Oceaneering. Former NASA astronauts, John “Danny” Olivas and Dan Burbank, each donned the suit and performed a series of test objectives while onboard a Zero Gravity plane that’s able to perform parabolic maneuvers to simulate microgravity for short bursts. They were surrounded by several support personnel who were gathering data about the suit performance.

In total, they performed 40 parabolas during the flight. Collins said the primary goals included “evaluation of the suit’s pressure garment system fit and functionality, use of International Space Station tools and interfaces, and reviewed performance of the new Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU, against the current design.”

“Throughout a series of entry and exit tasks, crew mobility assessments and suit donning, we observed that the suit performed as designed, affording increased range of motion and ease of movement,” said Peggy Guirgis, general manager, Space Systems, for Collins Aerospace, in a statement.

A Rocket Lab Electron rocket lifts off from New Zealand on the company’s first flight of 2024. Image: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab was back in action on Wednesday, kicking off its launch year with a recovery Electron mission from New Zealand. This was its second return to flight mission following a mishap late last year.

Liftoff from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand occurred at 7:34 p.m. NZDT (1:34 a.m. EST, 0634 UTC). Poor weather scuttled launch opportunities originally set for mid-January.

On board the Electron rocket for the “Four of a Kind” mission were four Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites from Spire Global and NorthStar Earth & Space.

This was the 43rd launch overall for Rocket Lab to date and the latest mission to recover the first stage booster. About 17 minutes into the flight, the booster splashed down in Pacific Ocean under parachutes, where it was scooped up by a recovery vessel.

Rocket Lab has ambitions of re-flying a first stage booster in its entirety. Last August, it demonstrated partial reuse with the re-flight of a Rutherford engine.

Polaris Dawn Commander Jared Isaacman (left) and Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet alongside a SpaceX render of the spacewalk that will be performed during their mission. Photoillustration: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Amid a flurry of astronaut missions scheduled for 2024, a commercial flight is aiming to mark a historic first: a non-governmental spacewalk.

This is just one of the goals of the Polaris Dawn mission, which was announced back in 2022. The mission’s commander, entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman, began working towards this mission shortly after the conclusion of his first spaceflight in 2021.

The Inspiration4 flight was a remarkable mission in its own right, as it became the first launch of an all-civilian group of astronauts, none of whom were current or former employees of a nation-state’s astronaut corps.

Isaacman and the mission’s pilot, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, recently sat down with Spaceflight Now to discuss the Polaris Dawn undertaking.

“This time around, there’s a lot of emphasis on our kind of specific objectives, the altitude, especially the EVA (extravehicular activity) and the new suit development,” Isaacman said. “And unlike being there at the end where they say ‘Here’s your suit,’ we get to be there through every iteration of it, you know, starting with an IVA (intra-vehicular activity) suit that’s not really suitable for going outside the vehicle, to what we have now, which is getting close to the flight article.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft for the first time on the NG-20 mission. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now

SpaceX is gearing up for its second launch bound for the International Space Station this month. But unlike all previous missions targeting the orbiting outpost, this flight doesn’t feature a Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX is poised to launch a Cygnus spacecraft on behalf of Northrop Grumman as part of NG’s 20th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract mission for NASA. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket supporting this launch is set for an instantaneous window of 1207 p.m. EST (0507 UTC).

The rocket will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission beginning at 10:15 a.m. EST (0315 UTC).

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1077, will be making its 10th flight. It previously launched the Dragon Endurance for the Crew-5 flight, the SpaceX CRS-28 mission as well as four Starlink flights.

A little over eight minutes after liftoff, B1077 will touchdown at Landing Zone 1 at CCSFS. Those watching the launch from Florida’s Space Coast or other parts of Central Florida may hear a sonic boom as the booster is reentering the atmosphere during the landing.

A Falcon 9 liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying 22 Starlink satellites. Image: SpaceX.

SpaceX launched its second Falcon 9 launch of the night with the Starlink 7-12 mission soaring skyward from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) on Sunday, Jan. 28, at 9:57 p.m. PST (12:57 a.m. EST, 0557 UTC).

It follows the Starlink 6-38 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center less than five hours earlier. The West Coast launch was adding another 22 Starlink satellites to a constellation with more than 5,300 satellites on orbit.

The Falcon 9 booster making this launch, tail number B1075, was on its ninth flight, all of which have launched from SLC-4E. It previously launched the Space Development Agency (SDA) 0A mission, the SARah 2 & 3 satellites and six prior Starlink missions.

About 8.25 minutes after launch, B1075 landed on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ This was the 81st landing on this droneship and the 268th overall Falcon 9 booster landing.

Here are the most current stats:

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center carrying 23 Starlink satellites into space. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

Update 8:40 p.m.: The first Falcon 9 of the night lifted off at 8:10 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX is preparing for a busy week to close out the month of January. Two Starlink flights are set to kick things off as the company prepares to launch a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station for the first time.

First up to bat is the Starlink 6-38 mission, which will send 23 more satellites to low Earth orbit. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket supporting this mission is set for Sunday, Jan. 28, at 8:10 p.m. EST (0110 UTC).

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning approximately one hour before liftoff.

SpaceX is calling upon Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to launch this mission. It will be the 74th launch of a Falcon rocket from this pad (including nine Falcon Heavy rockets) and the 167th launch overall.

A camera aboard a small micro rover deployed from Japan’s SLIM lunar lander captured an image of the probe resting on one side a few feet away after an engine malfunction during the final stages of descent Jan. 19. Image: JAXA.

One of two engines powering a Japanese moon lander during its descent to the surface Jan. 19 suffered a malfunction of some sort just 160 feet above the lunar surface that sharply reduced its power, the Japanese space agency said Thursday.

The spacecraft touched down at a safe, lower-than-expected velocity, but it was moving too fast sideways because of the unbalanced thrust. As a result, the otherwise-healthy probe apparently tipped over on landing, leaving its solar cells, attached to the upper surface of the craft, pointed to the west, directly away from the sun.

Unable to generate electricity, the spacecraft had only the limited power available in its on-board battery.

After downloading stored images and collecting as much science and engineering data as possible, flight controllers sent commands to shut the probe down 37 minutes after landing, before the battery was completely drained. That should improve the chances it will eventually “wake up” as the 14-day lunar day-night cycle proceeds and the angle to the sun changes.

While the engine problem curtailed post-landing operations, officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency — JAXA — said the Smart Lander for Investigating (the) Moon, or SLIM, spacecraft successfully demonstrated high-precision landing technology, the primary goal of the mission.

SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) aims to demonstrate “landing where it is desire to land”, pin-point landing technique and obstacle detection technique. Graphic: JAXA

A robotic Japanese moon lander touched down on the lunar surface Friday, but it immediately suffered a power glitch of some sort that prevented its solar cells from generating the electricity needed to keep it alive in the harsh lunar environment.

As a result, mission managers said, the otherwise apparently healthy Smart Lander for Investigating (the) Moon, or SLIM, was expected to exhaust its batteries within hours of touchdown, leaving it powerless and unable to receive commands or transmit telemetry and science data back to Earth.

There’s hope the probe could “wake up” at some point, assuming the spacecraft landed in the wrong orientation and the angle between the sun and the solar cells improves enough over time to generate enough power, but officials said that’s not at all certain.

“The SLIM has been communicating to the Earth station and it is receiving commands from the Earth accurately and the spacecraft is responding to these in a normal way,” Hitoshi Kuninaka, director general of the Japan Aerospace Research Agency, or JAXA, told reporters in translated remarks.

“However, it seems that the solar (cells are) not generating electricity at this point in time. And since we are not able to generate electricity, the operation is being done using batteries. … We are trying to (get stored data) back to the Earth, and we are making efforts to maximize the scientific (return).”

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander captured by a camera mounted onboard the lander on its second day in space. Image: Astrobotic

The first U.S. lander bound for the Moon since 1972 burned up in Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday. The unfortunate ending for Astrobotic’s spacecraft was deemed the most responsible choice given its hopes of reaching the Moon were dashed less than a day after it launched.

The Peregrine lunar lander is believed to have reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday, Jan. 18, according to Astrobotic. The company has been providing continuous insights into the mission, giving the public the opportunity to see the challenges of spaceflight with ongoing detail.

Astrobotic said any debris from the lander was expected to splash down in the South Pacific Ocean around 4:04 p.m. EST (2104 UTC) around longitude of 176.594 degrees West and a latitude of 23.087 degrees South, which is south of Fiji. The company said it lost telemetry from the spacecraft as expected at 3:50 p.m. EST (2050 UTC).

The reentry marked the end of the mission that launched on Jan. 8 onboard the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket.

This was the first lander that launched as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The agency paid $108 million to secure spots for five of its payloads among a total of 20 onboard the lander.

File: A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch a Starlink mission. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX scrubbed a Starlink delivery mission by Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday and rescheduled the launch from California for Friday. The Starlink 7-11 mission now scheduled for launch at 6:15 p.m. PST (9:15 p.m. EST (0215 UTC).

The company scrubbed the launch Thursday after loading propellants aboard the rocket at Vandenberg Space Force Base. It did not give a reason for the delay.

This will be SpaceX’s 7th launch of the year so far and its third from the Golden State. Onboard is a batch of 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, which will join the constellation of more than 5,300 currently on orbit.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage of the mission about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.

The first stage booster supporting this mission, tail number B1063 in the SpaceX fleet, will be making its 16th launch and landing on this flight. It previously supported the launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft the Transporter-7 rideshare mission and 10 Starlink flights in its past.

A Falcon 9 lifts off from Kennedy Space Center carrying an international crew on a commercial mission to the space station. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

After months of training and detailed planning, the most international crew yet to visit the International Space Station blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Thursday to kick off a two-week research mission, the third fully commercial flight to the orbital outpost.

With retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría and Italian co-pilot Walter Villadei at the controls, flanked by Turkish mission specialists Alper Gezeravci and Marcus Wandt of Sweden, the Falcon 9 thundered to life at 4:49 p.m. EST and climbed away from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center atop a brilliant jet of flaming exhaust.

The launch originally was planned for Wednesday, but SpaceX ordered a 24-hour delay, primarily to complete a review of work to address a potential issue with straps used to lessen the shock of parachute inflation during descent. The vehicle then was cleared for flight.

Rocketing away along a trajectory paralleling the East Coast of the United States, the 12-minute climb to space got off to a picture-perfect start, thrilling area residents and tourists with a late-afternoon sky show despite low clouds that limited the view.

Adding to the spectacle, the booster’s first stage, heralded by twin sonic booms, flew itself back to a rocket-powered landing at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, chalking up SpaceX’s 43rd landing in Florida and its 265th overall.

The countdown clock at Kennedy Space Center on hold after SpaceX scrubbed the launch of the Axiom 3 mission on Jan. 17, 2024. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.

SpaceX called off launch of its third commercial crew flight to the International Space Station Wednesday to allow more time for pre-flight data reviews. The flight, chartered by Houston-based Axiom Space, was reset for Thursday pending final analysis.

The delay was announced as the flight’s four-man crew — retired astronaut Michael López-Alegría, Italian Walter Villadei, Swedish flier Marcus Wandt and Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci — were getting prepared for launch on a two-week research mission aboard the orbital outpost.

Liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center’s historic pad 39A was re-targeted for 4:49 p.m. EST Thursday, roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carries the rocket into the plane of the station’s orbit to enable a rendezvous.

During a teleconference Tuesday night, Benji Reed, SpaceX senior director of human spaceflight programs, mentioned two recent issues that engineers were reviewing: concern about Crew Dragon parachute “energy modulator” straps and the torquing of connectors holding the Crew Dragon to the Falcon 9’s upper stage.

Reed said an inspection of an unpiloted Cargo Dragon that recently returned to Earth from the space station revealed some of the folded, stitched-together straps holding the ship’s main parachutes in place during flight had not performed quite as expected.

Update: SpaceX has delayed the launch of the Axiom 3 mission to Thursday.

Dragon Freedom stands ready for launch Wednesday morning at pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.An international four-man crew strapped into a SpaceX capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday for a dress-rehearsal countdown that sets the stage for launch Wednesday on a privately-funded research mission to the International Space Station.

Retired NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, Italian co-pilot Walter Villadei, European Space Agency astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden and Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci spent the afternoon rehearsing launch-day procedures aboard their crew Dragon spacecraft before departing the pad to clear the way for an engine test firing.

As few hours later, SpaceX engineers fired up the Falcon 9’s first stage engines to verify their readiness for blastoff. If all goes well, López-Alegría and his three crewmates will strap back in Wednesday for launch at 5:11 p.m. EST, kicking off an automated one-and-a-half-day rendezvous with the space station.

During a late Tuesday teleconference, officials said the rocket and spacecraft were ready to go after last-minute fixes for a parachute issue that cropped up after a recent cargo flight and work to replace connectors holding the Crew Dragon to the Falcon 9’s upper stage that did not appear to be torqued, or tightened, to specifications.