Forty more OneWeb internet satellites rocketed into orbit from Kennedy Space Center at sunset Thursday, the company’s first launch with SpaceX after suspending flights on Russian rockets earlier this year. A senior OneWeb official said the company has booked an extra launch with SpaceX, adding to a contract signed earlier this year.
Flying just 80 miles off the lunar surface, NASA’s Orion capsule fired its main engine Monday to slingshot around the moon and set a course for splashdown Dec. 11 in the Pacific Ocean to complete the Artemis 1 test flight. The unpiloted spacecraft relayed home ethereal real-time views of the moon’s cratered surface and a crescent Earth suspended in the blackness of space a quarter-million miles away.
Three Chinese astronauts landed Sunday after 182 days on China’s Tiangong space station, completing the busiest mission yet for the country’s human spaceflight program. The astronauts performed three spacewalks and assisted in the arrival and outfitting of two new lab modules at the Tiangong outpost.
Continuing a “drama-free” test flight, NASA’s unpiloted Orion spacecraft is set to fire its main engine Thursday to leave a distant orbit around the moon, heading for a flyby close to the lunar surface next week to swing onto a trajectory bringing it back to Earth for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11.
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