Mission Reports

Nine days after being upstaged by Richard Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is finally ready for his own flight into history, blasting off Tuesday morning aboard a fully automated spacecraft he believes will usher in a new era of commercial passenger service.

While Jeff Bezos and his three crewmates worked through a two-day “astronaut” training course, engineers Sunday tentatively cleared their New Shepard rocket and capsule for blastoff Tuesday on a 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space, matching rival Richard Branson’s feat nine days earlier.

An 18-year-old Dutch student will join Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and aviation pioneer Wally Funk next Tuesday when they blast off aboard the Amazon founder’s New Shepard rocket for its first sub-orbital flight to space with passengers on board.

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 owner Richard Branson rocketed into space Sunday, an edge-of-the-seat sub-orbital test flight intended to demonstrate his company’s air-launched spaceplane is ready for passengers who can afford the ultimate thrill ride.

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.