Articles by Stephen Clark

The upper stage for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System was installed on top of the heavy-lift rocket earlier this month, moving the agency one step closer to liftoff of the Artemis 1 test mission to the moon.

China launched five small satellites designed to detect and monitor global radio transmissions Friday on top of a Long March 6 rocket, joining five similar spacecraft deployed in orbit in 2019.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and five crewmates flew to the edge of space over New Mexico Sunday, riding the company’s VSS Unity rocketplane to an altitude of more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) after a high-altitude release from a carrier aircraft. The rocketplane safely landed back at Spaceport America.

China launched a fresh satellite for the country’s Tianlian data relay network July 6, reinforcing a fleet of spacecraft designed to connect ground controllers with the country’s space station.

Wrapping up a 36-day mission to the International Space Station, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico Friday night with biomedical experiments, spacewalk equipment, and other hardware returning from orbit.