Stephen Clark – Page 25 – Spaceflight Now

Live coverage: SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rocket with Eutelsat 10B satellite

November 22, 2022 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s oldest active Falcon 9 rocket booster, in service since 2018, made its final flight at 9:57 p.m. EST Tuesday (0257 GMT Wednesday) to deliver a Eutelsat broadband communications satellite into orbit on a mission to provide internet services to airplanes and ships across the North Atlantic, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. A launch attempt Monday night was scrubbed a couple of hours before liftoff.

Second pair of new space station solar arrays set for launch on Dragon cargo ship

November 21, 2022 Stephen Clark

A second pair of new roll-out solar arrays to upgrade the International Space Station’s power system is set for launch as soon as Tuesday on a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. Astronauts will help deploy the power-generating solar wings during a pair of spacewalks next week.

Eutelsat satellite to get last ride from SpaceX’s oldest active Falcon 9 booster

November 21, 2022 Stephen Clark

A 12,000-pound European broadband communications satellite designed to beam internet signals to airplanes and ships is ready to rocket into a high-altitude orbit from Cape Canaveral Monday night, marking the 11th and final flight for SpaceX’s oldest active Falcon 9 booster. The rocket will devote all of its lift capability to deploying the Eutelsat 10B satellite into as high of an orbit as possible.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft completes powered flyby of the moon

November 21, 2022 Stephen Clark

NASA’s unpiloted Orion spacecraft fired its main engine for two-and-a-half minutes Monday just before the capsule soared 81 miles from the surface of the moon, completing a flyby maneuver to bend its trajectory toward a distant orbit for more testing ahead of future lunar missions with astronauts.

Live coverage: Orion spacecraft slingshots by the moon

November 21, 2022 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Orion spacecraft fired its main engine at 7:44 a.m. EST (1244 GMT) Monday and flew just 81 miles from the lunar surface in a maneuver designed to set up for the capsule’s insertion into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon later this week.

NASA calls on “red crew” to fix leak near mostly fueled Artemis moon rocket

November 16, 2022 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket relied on advanced guidance algorithms, powerful cryogenic engines, and millions of lines of software code to get it off the ground for the first time Wednesday. But “there are also times when you’ve just got to put a wrench on a nut,” NASA’s Artemis ground systems program manager said. That’s what NASA did in final hours of the Artemis 1 mission’s countdown late Tuesday night, when the launch team called upon a “red crew” of two technicians and a safety engineer to tighten nuts around a leaky hydrogen valve.

NASA triumphs in successful debut launch of huge SLS moon rocket

November 16, 2022 Stephen Clark

NASA’s huge Space Launch System moon rocket finally took off from Florida early Wednesday after a decade in development, sending an unpiloted Orion crew capsule toward lunar orbit on a 25-day test flight to lay a path for astronauts to return to the moon for the first time since 1972.

Live coverage: NASA’s Artemis 1 moon mission finally underway

November 15, 2022 Stephen Clark

NASA’s oft-delayed Artemis 1 lunar test flight finally got off the ground at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) Wednesday with the inaugural blastoff of NASA’s huge Space Launch System moon rocket from Kennedy Space Center. The unpiloted demonstration mission will pave the way for future human missions to the moon.

ABL Space Systems on verge of first orbital launch attempt

November 13, 2022 Stephen Clark

ABL Space Systems could launch the first test flight of its one-ton class RS1 rocket from Alaska as soon as this week, after securing a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, the company said Sunday.

SpaceX launches Falcon 9 booster into retirement on Intelsat mission

November 12, 2022 Stephen Clark

SpaceX launched one of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket boosters for the last time Saturday on a rare expendable mission for Intelsat, devoting all of the launcher’s propellant toward placing a pair of television broadcasting satellites into orbit. Intelsat says it paid SpaceX an additional fee for the expendable mission.