Mission Reports

A Minotaur 1 rocket powered by a surplus Cold War-era missile stage more than 54 years old is poised to blast off from the Eastern Shore of Virginia Tuesday morning, heading to orbit with three top secret spacecraft for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency.

A Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket dropped from the belly of a carrier jet over the Pacific Ocean early Sunday and streaked into orbit with a small U.S. military space surveillance satellite named Odyssey, demonstrating a rapid launch capability in partnership with a secretive new Space Force special projects unit.

China launched four small satellites June 10 on a Long March 2D rocket, beginning Earth observation, asteroid monitoring, and technology demonstration missions.

An unidentified enthusiast bid an astronomical $28 million Saturday to win an on-line auction for a seat aboard a New Shepard spacecraft and a chance to make history next month, joining rocket owner and Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos for a commercial flight to space.

A small U.S. military satellite named Odyssey, designed and built in less than a year by a secretive new Space Force special projects unit, is set to launch early Sunday from an aircraft off the coast of California aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket.

The sharp-eyed camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted China’s Zhurong rover on the Red Planet, showing the craft next so its landing platform, with pieces of its heat shield and parachute nearby.

SpaceX has signed a deal with Axiom Space, a Houston company that arranges private astronaut expeditions, for three more fully commercial Crew Dragon missions to the International Space Station beyond Axiom’s first Dragon flight in early 2022.

The Long March 2F rocket and Shenzhou 12 spaceship set to ferry three Chinese astronauts to the country’s new space station later this month rolled out to a launch pad Wednesday at a remote military-operated spaceport in northwestern China.