Join us for a roundup of the week’s space news with reporters covering the big stories. Spaceflight Now’s Will Robinson-Smith is joined by Chris Davenport of The Washington Post and Gina Sunseri of ABC News. The show goes live at 4 p.m. EST (2100 UTC).
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket flew its 300th mission on Thursday Feb. 16, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:34 p.m. PST (4:34 p.m. EST, 2134 UTC) carrying another batch of satellites for the company’s Starlink internet service.
The mission, dubbed USSF-124, was the eighth National Security Space Launch using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff occurred at the start of a four-hour launch window that opened at 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 UTC) on Wednesday.
Intuitive Machines and SpaceX stood down from the first launch opportunity for the Nova-C lander. The Falcon 9 rocket supporting the mission is set to lift off on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 1:05 a.m. EST.
ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno described the first flight of the Vulcan launch as remarkable in his career. He said hardware for Vulcan’s next flight will head down to Florida soon.
SpaceX launched an environmental research satellite for NASA early Thursday, a nearly $1 billion spacecraft that survived multiple cancellation threats and is now poised to shed new light on climate change and the complex interplay of heat-trapping carbon, aerosols and sea life on global scales.
The mission is the first of the year for NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the Kennedy Space Center. The Falcon 9 rocket is lifted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:33 a.m. EST (0633 UTC) on Feb. 8.
The spacecraft named PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) has a nominal operating life of three years with the amount of fuel to potentially have it last a decade. It’s set to launch onboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday, Feb. 6.
The cargo transport vehicle is in the middle of shake table testing at NASA’s Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio. It will be the payload onboard United Launch Alliance’s second certification flight of the Vulcan rocket.