The inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which will send NASA’s ESCAPADE mission on its way to Mars, now has a tentative launch date. NASA announced on Monday (Aug. 26) that the mission will launch no earlier than Oct. 13. Blue Origin’s first New Glenn...

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, is now operational in Ghana, furthering the country’s ambitions for digital connectivity. Rebecca Slick Hunter, Director of Starlink Global Licensing and Market Activation, announced Ghana’s entry into the growing list of African nations benefiting from...

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) has revealed the five top-performing teams that will proceed to the Advanced Phase Two Space Tech Mission Idea Contest (ST-MIC) Training and Bootcamp. The competition initially attracted over 40 mission ideas from universities across Kenya. Twenty mission ideas were...

SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded, at least for a little while. A Falcon 9 successfully launched 21 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites this morning (Aug. 28), sending them to orbit on the record-breaking 23rd mission for the rocket’s first stage. That booster...

Japan has called an end to its SLIM moon mission after failing to make contact with the lander since April. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on a H-IIA rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center on Sep. 7, 2023. The diminutive lander...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just set a new reusability record, on what may have been its final flight. The Falcon 9 launched 21 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites today (Aug. 28), lifting off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3:48 a.m. EDT (0748 GMT). It was the 23rd mission...

On Sept. 8, 2024, a satellite named Salsa will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. What makes this re-entry different is that its operators have carefully guided it down from 81,250 miles (130,000 km) to burn up safely over a hand-picked region of the South Pacific — if all goes to plan. Salsa will...

Polaris Dawn was originally scheduled to launch early Monday morning (Aug. 26) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but SpaceX pushed things back a day to perform more preflight checkouts. The company then called the planned Tuesday (Aug. 27) attempt off after detecting a helium leak...

The closest approach to the Moon was at 23:15 CEST (21:15 UTC) on 19 August, guiding Juice towards a closest approach to Earth just over 24 hours later at 23:56 CEST (21:56 UTC) on 20 August. As Juice flew just 6840 km above Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, it snapped a series of images...