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...

Blue Origin will launch its eighth human spaceflight this week, if all goes according to plan. Jeff Bezos‘ company is targeting Thursday (Aug. 29) for NS-26, its latest suborbital space tourism mission. The reusable New Shepard rocket-capsule combo is scheduled to lift off from Blue...

SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn astronaut mission remains on track to lift off early Tuesday morning (Aug. 27). Over the weekend, SpaceX briefly ignited the first-stage engines of the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch Polaris Dawn, in a common preflight test known as a static fire. “Static...

SpaceX is about to launch four private astronauts farther than any human has flown since the end of the Apollo era. The crew will be on a mission to perform history’s first commercial spacewalk. The mission, Polaris Dawn, will liftoff early Tuesday (Aug. 27), from SpaceX’s Launch...