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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched for the 21st time tonight (May 17), setting a new reusability record for the company. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:32 p.m. EDT (0032 GMT on May 18), sending 23 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites toward orbit. The Falcon 9’s first […]

The first astronaut mission of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft has been pushed back by an additional four days, to May 25. Tuesday (May 21) had been the latest target date for the launch of Starliner‘s Crew Flight Test (CFT), which will send NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station (ISS)

Some American lawmakers are concerned that the U.S. Space Force’s two premiere spaceports can’t keep up with a steep increase in demand for launch pads. The House Armed Services Committee wrote a draft of its fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (the annual laws that oversee military spending). That draft states that the two main

China launched the latest in its secretive Shiyan satellite series over the weekend. A Long March 4C rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China, at 7:43 p.m.EDT on May 11 (2343 GMT, or 7:43 a.m. Beijing time on May 12). Chinese authorities revealed the mission payload to be

Pieces of a SpaceX spacecraft might have landed in Saskatchewan. A charred piece of debris, possibly from a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, was found in a Canadian farmer’s field in a town northeast of Regina, one of the largest cities in the prairie province. “We knew it came from the sky, because it couldn’t get

On May 17, 1974, NASA launched the first Synchronous Meteorological Satellite, SMS-1. This was the first satellite designed to monitor meteorological conditions from a geostationary orbit. This kind of orbit allowed it to stay above a fixed location as Earth rotates. One of the instruments on this spacecraft was a visible infrared spin-scan radiometer (VISSR),

The BepiColombo spacecraft, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), could be feeling the heat even before it reaches its destination: Mercury. Thanks to a glitch, the spacecraft’s thrusters are no longer operating at full power. The team has yet to determine how this will impact upcoming maneuvers, like

As you might’ve heard, there’s a little bit of solar activity going on. Okay, a lot of solar activity. In fact, there’s been so much solar activity that some heliophysicists — not to mention laypeople waiting to witness the aurora — have probably not slept for the last week or so. Of course, space agencies across the

India has announced a breakthrough that could boost its efforts to grow as a space-faring nation. On May 9, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed a successful hot-fire test of a liquid-fueled rocket engine that was built using additive manufacturing (colloquially known as 3D printing) technology. The engine, which burns a hypergolic mix of

Astronomers have discovered three ancient stars “on the run” in the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, racing the wrong way at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. Despite being spritely for their age, the three stars are so old that they date back to the formation of the first galaxies. That’s between one