A commercial moon craft developed by the Japanese company ispace is awaiting launch from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will send it on a five-month trajectory culminating in a lunar landing attempt next year, an achievement that could make ispace the first private company to accomplish the feat.
A Chinese Long March 2F rocket launched three astronauts into orbit from a remote launch site in the Gobi Desert of northwestern China at 10:08 a.m. EST (1508 GMT) Tuesday. The Shenzhou 15 astronauts are embarking on a half-year expedition on China’s Tiangong space station. Docking at the space station is expected about six hours after liftoff.
After a launch attempt earlier in the week was scrubbed due to bad weather, SpaceX sent a Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station Saturday with nearly four tons of supplies and experiments. Liftoff on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center occurred at 2:20 p.m. EST (1920 GMT).
Another major engine burn on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission placed the Orion spacecraft into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon, where it will spend six days performing more tests and demonstrations before returning to Earth. The 88-second burn by Orion’s main engine occurred at 4:52 p.m. EST (2152 GMT) Friday.
© 1999-2026 Spaceflight Now Inc