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SpaceX is preparing to launch the fifth flight of its Starship megarocket as soon as Oct. 13, despite repeated statements from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the flight test would likely have to wait until November. Starship last flew in June, and SpaceX nailed its launch objectives by returning the rocket to Earth as […]

Blue Origin will have to wait a bit longer to debut its second human-rated spacecraft. Jeff Bezos‘ aerospace company planned to launch its uncrewed NS-27 mission Monday morning (Oct. 7), sending a brand-new New Shepard rocket-capsule combo on a brief trip to suborbital space. But technical issues intervened. “We’re going to scrub the launch for

A unique asteroid mission is underway. The European Space Agency‘s Hera mission launched today (Oct. 7) at 10:52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT), riding a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in coastal Florida. ESA’s Hera spacecraft soared into a cloudy sky above Florida to begin a multimillion-mile trek across the solar

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have gained a more detailed picture of the turbulent “pancakes” of gas and dust surrounding young stars, feeding them and facilitating their growth before birthing planets. JWST gathered new details about the “winds of change” flows of gas that blow through these protoplanetary disks, carving out their

In a significant milestone for South Africa’s space industry, Aerospace Systems Research Institute (ASRI) engineers have commissioned a cutting-edge suborbital sounding rocket launch facility at the Denel Overberg Test Range (OTR) in the Western Cape. Funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), this facility is the first of its kind in the country,

SpaceX will launch Europe’s Hera spacecraft toward the asteroid Dimorphos for a post-impact evaluation on Monday (Oct. 7), and you can watch the liftoff live. The European Space Agency‘s Hera mission will visit Dimorphos — the asteroid that NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft knocked off course in September 2022. Hera will assess the

We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see NASA’s Europa Clipper probe get off the ground. The $5 billion Europa Clipper mission had been scheduled to launch on Thursday (Oct. 10) atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), on Florida’s Atlantic Coast. But Hurricane Milton has nixed that plan.

Using NASA’s exoplanet-hunting spacecraft, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists have spotted a record-breaking triple-star system so tightly bound that it could fit comfortably between the sun and its closest planet, Mercury. The system, designated TIC 290061484 contains twin stars that race around each other once every 1.8 Earth days as well as a

Zebrafish aboard China’s space station are doing well in orbit, according to an update on the experiments. The four zebrafish arrived at the Tiangong space station aboard the Shenzhou 18 spacecraft on April 26, along with astronauts Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu. The fish live in a tank that forms a miniaturized self-sustaining

United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) powerful new Vulcan Centaur rocket is two for two. Vulcan Centaur, the successor to ULA’s workhorse Atlas V, launched today (Oct. 4) at 7:25 a.m. EDT (1125 GMT) after a series of holds from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, kicking off a key test flight called Cert-2. ULA declared the