December 2015 – Page 2 – Spaceflight Now

Round-trip rocket flight gives SpaceX a trifecta of successes

December 22, 2015 Stephen Clark

Flying through the sky at supersonic speed, a Falcon 9 rocket stage descended to a historic landing at Cape Canaveral on Monday, returning to the spaceport minutes after boosting 11 Orbcomm communications satellites toward orbit on SpaceX’s first mission since a major failure in June.

Q&A with Elon Musk after SpaceX’s first rocket landing

December 22, 2015 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s billionaire founder and chief executive Elon Musk spoke with reporters just after successfully landing a Falcon 9 booster for the first time.

From all angles: Up and down with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster

December 22, 2015 Stephen Clark

Relive the experience with imagery from Monday night’s blazing blastoff of a Falcon 9 rocket and its historic, dramatic landing at Cape Canaveral.

Watch SpaceX recover booster: “The Falcon has landed”

December 22, 2015 Spaceflight Now

Watch as SpaceX successfully returns the first stage of its Falcon 9 booster to a landing at Cape Canaveral just minutes after it blasted off.

Falcon 9 launch timeline with Orbcomm satellites

December 21, 2015 Stephen Clark

Track the progress of the launch and landing of SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 rocket carrying 11 Orbcomm message relay satellites with this timeline of major events in the flight sequence.

Successful spacewalk frees up robot arm transporter

December 21, 2015 William Harwood

Space station commander Scott Kelly and newly-arrived flight engineer Tim Kopra ventured outside the lab complex Monday and freed up a stalled robot arm-carrying transporter so it could be moved to a nearby anchor point and locked down, clearing the way for a Russian Progress supply ship to dock Wednesday.

Modernized Russian cargo ship heads for space station

December 21, 2015 Stephen Clark

Russia’s Progress supply ship got an upgrade with a successful cargo launch to the International Space Station on Monday to kick off a two-day flight to the complex with more than 2.8 tons of equipment, propellant and water.

Falcon 9’s return-to-flight launch delayed 24 hours

December 20, 2015 Stephen Clark

SpaceX called off a try Sunday to launch a package of Orbcomm communications satellites from Cape Canaveral, eyeing a better chance to land the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage booster Monday, according to Elon Musk, the company’s billionaire founder.

Patience a key ingredient in Orbcomm’s new satellite fleet

December 20, 2015 Stephen Clark

Nearly a decade after Orbcomm raised the money to pay for a second-generation satellite fleet to drastically expand the company’s reach, the $230 million program is finally primed for completion after Monday’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Unscheduled spacewalk on tap Monday

December 20, 2015 William Harwood

An unexpected, quickly-planned spacewalk is on tap Monday to troubleshoot a problem preventing the International Space Station’s robot arm transporter from reaching a worksite where it can be locked down, a requirement before a Russian Progress cargo ship can dock later in the week.