Mission Reports

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.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew by Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, Monday on the first close-up visit to the icy world since 2000.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his brother, Mark, will join the winner of an online auction for blast off next month on an up-and-down suborbital flight to the edge of space aboard a New Shepard rocket and capsule built by Blue Origin, the tech billionaire’s space company.

China launched the Fengyun 4B weather observatory June 2 aboard a Long March 3B rocket, deploying the second in a new generation of geostationary spacecraft tracking typhoons, monitoring Earth’s climate, and measuring the space environment.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the SXM 8 radio broadcasting satellite into orbit around 32 minutes later.

The U.S. military plans to spend nearly $48 million next year on a program that could eventually allow shipment of heavy cargo around the world in less than an hour using giant commercial rockets, such as SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, officials said Friday.