Space News & Blog Articles

The Falcon 9 returns to flight two weeks after an upper stage failure. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.

A two-week launch hiatus for SpaceX came to a close after midnight on Saturday with the Starlink 10-9 mission returning the Falcon 9 to flight after an upper stage mishap on a July 11 grounded the workhorse rocket.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:45 a.m. EDT (0545 UTC). The mission marked the 50th dedicated Starlink launch in 2024. A successful payload deployment was confirmed just over an hour after launch.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that oversees commercial space activities in the U.S., gave SpaceX permission to resume launches of its Falcon 9 rocket before the formal mishap investigation is completed.

The FAA signed off on SpaceX’s requested public safety determination, one of two routes that a launch provider who suffers a mishap during a mission can use to return to launching its rockets.

“After a comprehensive review, the FAA determined no public safety issues were involved in the anomaly that occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 9-3 launch on July 11,” the FAA said in a statement on Thursday. “This public safety determination means the Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation remains open, provided all other license requirements are met.”

NASA astronauts held their own mini-Olympics on the International Space Station to mark the start of the Summer Games here on Earth.

SpaceX is now eyeing mid- to late August for the launch of the Polaris Dawn astronaut mission, which will feature the first-ever private spacewalk.

Astronomers have found that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, has some of the most carbon dioxide-rich deposits in the solar system, hinting at a buried water ocean.

A solar flare on July 23 was even bigger than a previous one that triggered May's global aurora storm, but this one was facing away from Earth on the far side of the sun.

The Space Gal is headed into orbit, as part of Space for Humanity's Citizen Astronaut Program.

The four astronauts flying aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon are supposed to launch no earlier than Aug. 18 and splash down near Florida. Future crews will go to the west coast due to space junk concerns.

Auroras, stars and a fleeting meteor are captured in a mesmerizing new view from the International Space Station.

Europe's JUICE Jupiter spacecraft will swing past Earth on Aug. 20, and some skywatchers in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean region may be able to see it.

SpaceX plans to launch 23 of its Starlink broadband satellites early Saturday morning (July 27), on the company's first mission since a July 11 failure.

Astroscale's ELSA-M demo space junk collector will remove a defunct OneWeb satellite from orbit in 2027.

Watch live as NASA holds briefings at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on the upcoming Crew 9 mission. A SpaceX Dragon capsule is due to ferry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, and Stephanie Wilson and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the International Space Station in August. Meanwhile at Kennedy Space Center SpaceX is rolling out a Falcon 9 for the first launch of its workhorse rocket since an upper stage failure on July 11 suspended flights.

ESA reserve astronaut John McFall's story inspired a study suggesting that the space community's inclusion efforts should be used in other fields, especially medicine.

Week in images: 22-26 July 2024

Discover our week through the lens

Very low in the west in bright twilight, have you picked up Venus yet? Binoculars help. Much tougher will be Mercury and Regulus. Their arrangement changes all week.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, July 26 – August 3 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Image: This striking high-resolution image offers an in-depth view of central Paris, allowing you to explore and zoom into the city’s most captivating areas in exceptional detail.

Boeing’s Starliner, docked at the International Space Station, pictured in a long-duration exposure as the craft soared 258 miles above western China. Image: NASA.

Critical tests are on tap this weekend to confirm Boeing’s Starliner capsule can safety carry its two-person crew back to Earth despite unexpected helium leaks and degraded maneuvering thrusters, officials said Thursday.

The problems, discovered during the ship’s rendezvous with the International Space Station in early June, triggered weeks of testing and analysis that have extended the ship’s first piloted test flight from a little more than one week to nearly two months.

Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, both veterans of earlier space station visits, have taken the extended mission in stride and are enjoying their bonus time in orbit.

As for when they might be cleared to return to Earth, Stich told reporters “we don’t have a major announcement today relative to a return date. We’re making great progress, but we’re just not quite ready to do that.”

Two technical hurdles remain: tests this weekend to “hot fire” 27 maneuvering thrusters in the Starliner’s service module to make sure they will work as expected between undocking and re-entry; and parallel testing to confirm five known helium leaks in the propulsion pressurization system have not worsened.