Joining the live video podcast on Friday, April 5, are Emilee Speck, space journalist with FOX Weather, and Stephen Clark, space reporter with Ars Technica. The show begins at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 UTC) on the Spaceflight Now YouTube channel.
The launch came on the heels of a record month for the company, which saw 12 Falcon 9 flights. Liftoff happened at 5:12 a.m. EDT (0912 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40.
NASA awarded the so-called ‘Lunar Terrain Vehicle Service’ contract and classified it as an “indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, milestone-based LTVS contract with firm-fixed-price task orders.” The agency said it “has a combined maximum potential value of $4.6 billion for all awards.”
SpaceX hopes to launch Falcon 9 rockets from its two launch pads in Florida and its one in California on Saturday night. Liftoff of the Eutelsat 36D satellite from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 UTC), the opening of a nearly four-hour window.
The 16th and last launch of the Delta 4 Heavy configuration also marks the end of Delta line of launch vehicles. NROL-70 with be the 389th Delta launch since 1960 and 45th Delta 4 rocket.
Assuming a May 1 launch, the Starliner spacecraft would dock with the ISS on May 2. The spacecraft will launch on the 100th flight of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket.
This Falcon 9 flight marks the 20th orbital launch from Florida in 2024. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 7:42p.m. EDT (2342 UTC).
Two days after a rare last-second launch abort, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasted off Saturday on a flight to the International Space Station, carrying two short-duration crew members and a NASA astronaut bound for a six-month tour of duty.
The MS-25 mission was scrubbed on Thursday, but the root cause is still under investigation. The earliest that liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome can now occur is Saturday, March 23, pending the outcome of the investigation.
The Commercial Resupply Services-30 (CRS-30) mission featured the first launch of a Dragon spacecraft to the ISS from pad 40 since the final first-generation SpaceX cargo ship flew in March 2020.
The mission came as SpaceX is preparing to launch a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station later this week. Liftoff of the Starlink 7-16 mission happened at 7:28 p.m. PT (10:28 p.m. ET, 0228 UTC).