SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Sunday night with 51 more Starlink internet satellites and a rideshare payload that will use a Spaceflight-built orbital transfer vehicle to climb into a higher orbit to test broadband communications technology for Boeing. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral occurred at 10:09 p.m. EDT Sunday (0209 GMT Monday).
NASA says it will carry out repairs and tests on the Artemis 1 rocket at the launch pad rather than immediately rolling back to the hangar. The agency needs the Space Force to extend the certification of flight termination batteries if it wants to make another launch attempt in September. Otherwise the rocket will have to return to the assembly building and face a lengthy delay.
The first unpiloted mission for NASA’s Artemis lunar program aims to prove out the most powerful rocket to ever launch from U.S. soil, and test the function of a human-rated spacecraft traveling more than 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon before blazing back through Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 25,000 mph.
Two Russian cosmonauts completed a 7-hour, 47-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station Friday to continue testing and readying the European Robotic Arm for regular operations, finishing tasks originally planned for a spacewalk last month that was cut short by a spacesuit battery problem.
Confident that out-of-bounds engine temperature readings during Monday’s Artemis 1 countdown came from a bad sensor, NASA officials gave the green light Thursday to move forward with another try Saturday afternoon to launch the agency’s giant new moon rocket on an unpiloted test flight from the Kennedy Space Center.
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