News

The 400th flight of China’s Long March rocket family deployed two classified Shijian 6 satellites into orbit Dec. 10, likely on a mission to test technology or gather signals intelligence data for the Chinese military.

A solid-fueled Ceres satellite launcher developed to serve China’s burgeoning commercially-focused smallsat market successfully deployed five spacecraft into orbit Dec. 7, making the new Chinese rocket two-for-two since its debut last year.

Sixty years after her father became the first American in space, Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, rocketed out of the lower atmosphere Saturday, joining ABC TV host Michael Strahan and four others for a thrilling 10-minute climb to space and back.

A crane at the Guiana Space Center in South America will hoist the nearly $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope more than 15 stories above the floor of a rocket assembly hangar this weekend to position the observatory on top of its Ariane 5 launcher for blastoff later this month.

Sixty years after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, his oldest daughter plans to blast off Saturday on a sub-orbital flight of her own, joining former NFL star and TV host Michael Strahan, two entrepreneurs and a father-and-son duo aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft.