Rocket Lab said Saturday that the company received final approval from NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to launch their first mission from the United States on Sunday, clearing final regulatory and technical hurdles with a new autonomous range safety destruct unit that delayed the launch more than two years.
SpaceX launched 54 more Starlink internet satellites Saturday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, using a Falcon 9 booster on its 15th flight to space, a record for the company’s reusable rocket fleet. The mission was also the third Falcon 9 rocket flight in less than 34 hours from SpaceX’s three active launch pads in less.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 3:46 a.m. PST (6:46 a.m. EST; 1146 GMT) Friday, carrying the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite into orbit for NASA and the French space agency CNES. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster returned to the California launch base for landing.
The first two spacecraft in an 11-satellite refresh of SES’s Medium Earth Orbit O3b internet constellation are poised to rocket into space from Cape Canaveral on Friday, less than two weeks after shipment to the Florida spaceport from a Boeing factory in California already fully fueled and integrated for launch.
A Russian Soyuz crew ferry ship docked to the International Space Station spewed particles of an unknown substance, presumably coolant fluid, into space Wednesday night, forcing two Russian cosmonauts to call off a planned spacewalk as engineers on the ground scrambled to determine the source and the effects of the leak.
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