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...

India plans to launch a key test of its Gaganyaan crew vehicle before the end of the year as the country gears up for human spaceflight missions. Some rocket hardware for the uncrewed Gaganyaan test flight has arrived at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the huge barrier island Sriharikota...

We’ll have to wait at least another day to see SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn astronaut mission lift off. Polaris Dawn, which will conduct the first-ever private spacewalk, had been scheduled to launch early Tuesday morning (Aug. 27) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But...

Call it one high leap for astronaut science. The Polaris Dawn mission, funded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Tuesday morning (Aug. 27). It has two major operations goals: to perform the first-ever private spacewalk and...