Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with the Formosat 5 Earth observation satellite for Taiwan’s National Space Organization.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket will lift off Saturday at 11:50 a.m. PDT (2:50 p.m. EDT; 1850 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
A bad input to the Ariane 5 rocket’s guidance system that was missed during pre-launch quality control checks caused the launcher to deviate from its expected flight path and place two commercial communications satellites in the wrong orbit Jan. 25, Arianespace announced Friday.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket failed approximately 2 minutes, 20 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Sunday. Watch a video of the dramatic launch failure, plus a slowed-down high-definition version at one-tenth normal speed.
None of the teams who have spent the last decade chasing a $20 million grand prize by placing a privately-funded lander on the moon will meet a deadline at the end of March to claim the award, the organizers of the Google Lunar X Prize announced Tuesday.