Articles by Stephen Clark

The first test flight of a commercial orbital transfer vehicle from Momentus is suffering from a problem with its solar panels after launching last month on a SpaceX rocket, and the company said Monday that its confidence in completing the spacecraft’s demonstrations has “substantially declined.”

The FAA is requiring SpaceX take more than 75 actions to reduce the environmental effects of flying its gigantic 40-story-tall Starship rocket from South Texas, but regulators said Monday they found no significant impacts and moved SpaceX a step closer to receiving a launch license.

Two small NASA hurricane research satellites were destroyed after launch from Cape Canaveral Sunday when their commercial rocket, provided by Astra, prematurely shut down its upper stage engine before reaching the mission’s target orbit.

The first of three launches to deploy a fleet of six small NASA hurricane research satellites failed minutes after liftoff at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT) Sunday from Cape Canaveral. The upper stage engine of Astra’s small commercial launcher shut down prematurely, leading to the loss of NASA’s first two TROPICS nanosatellites.

Astra is preparing to launch the first of three straight dedicated missions for NASA this weekend at Cape Canaveral to deploy six shoebox-size hurricane research satellites, helping pioneer a new paradigm of riskier but less expensive science missions.