Less than 18 months after its first crewed launch, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket have successfully completed their fifth astronaut launch, sending a crew of four on their way to the International Space Station (ISS). After ~10 days of weather and sequencing delays and two days after Crew-2 astronauts returned to Earth…
Two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets remain on track to attempt back-to-back astronaut and Starlink satellite launches later this week. Both SpaceX East Coast drone ships Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) and A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) and two new support and fairing recovery ships (Bob and Doug) are all headed northeast into the Atlantic Ocean,…
After spending almost 200 days in orbit, a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft has successfully returned four international Crew-2 astronauts to Earth, marking major firsts both for the company and NASA. Launched on April 23rd, 2021, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide are now safely back…
Poor winter weather on Florida’s East Coast and across the Atlantic Ocean has forced NASA and SpaceX to flip the nominal sequence of events for the imminent back-to-back launch and recovery of two Crew Dragons. Contrary to preference, SpaceX and NASA’s four Crew-2 astronauts are now scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS)…
Less than a year after tank farm assembly began in South Texas, SpaceX has begun the painstaking process of filling Starship’s first orbital launch site with thousands of tons of rocket propellant. Comprised of seven giant custom-built tanks, the last of which SpaceX installed and ‘sleeved’ in mid-October, Starbase’s first orbital-class tank farm is a bit like the…
While specific details of the decision are likely a few weeks away, the US Court of Federal Claims has denied an infamous Blue Origin lawsuit, upholding NASA’s decision to award SpaceX a contract to create a Starship-derived Moon lander. The ruling ends almost seven months of delays explicitly caused by protests and lawsuits filed by…
NASA says that the Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft has arrived at SpaceX’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) facilities for a launch later this month. After being carefully packaged for shipment from Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (JHUAPL) on September 29th, the small 690 kg (~1500 lb) spacecraft was transported by road and…
New US military confirmation of a third SpaceX Falcon Heavy contract means that the world’s most powerful operational rocket has five launches firmly scheduled next year. On October 30th, a US Space Systems Command spokesperson confirmed to SpaceNews that the military’s USSF-67 contract with SpaceX – announced in August 2020 – is for a Falcon Heavy launch directly to…
SpaceX has won a contract to launch Skynet on a Falcon 9 rocket in 2025. Instead of a self-aware, apocalyptic AI, though, “Skynet” refers to the United Kingdom’s planned Skynet 6A spacecraft – part of a family of military communications satellites that far predate their science fiction namesake. It will be the 15th such satellite…
It might not look like much today but SpaceX has begun assembling what is set to become Starbase’s largest Starship manufacturing facility. The structure, which has generally come to be known as Starbase’s ‘wide bay,’ was first teased by CEO Elon Musk in July 2021 and will be the fourth permanent assembly ‘bay’ constructed at Starbase –…