Space News & Blog Articles

File photo of two OneWeb satellites at the company’s factory in Merritt Island, Florida. Credit: Airbus OneWeb Satellites

SpaceX is set to deliver 40 more internet satellites into orbit for OneWeb with a late-night blastoff Monday from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, followed by landing of the first stage booster back at the Florida spaceport less than 10 minutes later.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket. The air-launched rocket will climb into orbit with nine small satellite payloads after release from a Boeing 747 carrier aircraft after taking off from Spaceport Cornwall in South West England. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.



Virgin Orbit’s carrier aircraft arrived at Spaceport Cornwall from the company’s home base in Mojave, California, late last year for final launch preparations. Credit: Virgin Orbit

A new chapter in spaceflight history will be made Monday when the first ever satellites to be launched into orbit from Western Europe begin their journey into space inside a rocket slung beneath a converted jumbo jet carrier aircraft that will take off from Cornwall on the southwest peninsula of England.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for the USSF-67 mission inside the integration hangar at Launch Complex 39A. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is set to kick off a busy week of launch preparations at Kennedy Space Center for the first of five planned Falcon Heavy rocket missions this year, targeting a dusk departure no earlier than Thursday evening from Launch Complex 39A on a flight for the U.S. Space Force.

The next piece of SpaceX’s growing Starship infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center arrived at Launch Complex 39A on Friday. A carriage apparatus for the Starship pad’s mechanized chopstick arm system rolled to the complex for installation on the launch pad tower.

A truck carrying NASA’s Orion spacecraft from the Artemis 1 test flight arrived back at Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 30. Credit: NASA

Fresh off the 1.4-million-mile Artemis 1 test flight around around the moon, NASA’s Orion spacecraft arrived Dec. 30 back at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians will offload propellants and payloads, and begin removing internal hardware destined to fly back to the moon with astronauts on the next Orion crew capsule in 2024.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The Transporter 6 mission will launch 114 small payloads from customers around the world. Follow us on Twitter.

Launcher’s Orbiter SN1 transfer vehicle hosts multiple payloads on SpaceX’s Transporter 6 mission. Credit: Launcher / John Kraus

The 114 small satellites set for launch Tuesday on SpaceX’s first mission of the year include 36 spacecraft for Planet’s commercial remote sensing fleet, a space-based solar power experiment, and space tugs to piggyback payloads into different orbits.

NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket streaks into the night sky over Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography

The U.S. Space Force is preparing for as many as 87 launches from Florida’s Space Coast in 2023, including dozens more SpaceX missions and the expected debuts of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Relativity’s Terran 1 rockets.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with the Israeli EROS C3 satellite. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX launched its 61st and final mission of 2022 Thursday night from California, placing an Israeli Earth-imaging satellite into orbit and tying a 1980 record for the most successful flights by a rocket family in a single year.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California with the EROS C3 Earth observation satellite for ImageSat International. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.





NASA’s InSight lander used its robotic arm to capture this final “selfie” of the mission in April 2022. Dust is visible on the lander’s two solar panels. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Dust-laden solar panels and darker Martian skies have finally sealed the fate of NASA’s InSight mission, the agency announced Wednesday, after the intrepid lander delivered its final message from Mars at the end of its history-making mission to reveal the secrets of the Red Planet’s interior.

Illustration of the Vega C rocket with its Zefiro 40 second stage firing. Credit: Arianespace

The final two spacecraft in Airbus’s four-satellite, 600 million-euro commercial Pléiades Neo Earth observation fleet crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after launch from French Guiana Tuesday night, falling victim to a failure of a European Vega C rocket.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Vega C rocket with the Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 commercial Earth observation satellites for Airbus. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

A Vega C rocket on its launch pad in French Guiana with the Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging satellites inside the payload fairing. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/S. Martin

Two Pléiades Neo Earth observation satellites are set to join Airbus’s constellation of high-resolution optical imagers with a launch Tuesday night from French Guiana on the first commercial flight of Europe’s Vega C rocket, a mission delayed from November to change out suspect hardware on the launcher’s payload fairing.

Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft is pictured docked at the International Space Station in this Oct. 8 file photo. Credit: NASA

Russian managers are assessing whether a damaged Soyuz spacecraft docked at the International Space Station can safely carry its three-man crew back to Earth in late March as planned or whether a replacement must be launched to take its place, officials said Monday.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Launch Complex 2 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia. The Electron rocket will carry three radio frequency monitoring microsatellites into orbit for HawkEye 360. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Rocket Lab’s Electron launcher on the pad at Wallops Island, Virginia. Credit: Rocket Lab / Trevor Mahlmann

Rocket Lab said Saturday that the company received final approval from NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to launch their first mission from the United States on Sunday, clearing final regulatory and technical hurdles with a new autonomous range safety destruct unit that delayed the launch more than two years.