News – Page 370 – Spaceflight Now

April 3, 2026

Breaking News

[ April 2, 2026 ] Artemis 2 crew blasts off on historic moon mission Artemis
[ April 1, 2026 ] Live coverage: NASA to launch Artemis 2, its first Moon-bound mission with astronauts since 1972 Artemis
[ March 30, 2026 ] Falcon 9 booster launches for record 34th time on Starlink delivery mission Falcon 9
[ March 30, 2026 ] SpaceX launches 119 payloads on smallsat rideshare mission from California Falcon 9
[ March 26, 2026 ] SpaceX launches batch of Starlink satellites from the West Coast Falcon 9

New Horizons finds Ultima Thule has an unexpected, flattened shape

February 20, 2019 Stephen Clark

Images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it flew by an object the size of a large metropolitan area at the frontier of the solar system Jan. 1 have revealed the miniature world has a more flattened shape than the flyby’s initial pictures suggested.

Falcon 9 launch set for Thursday at Cape Canaveral

February 19, 2019 Stephen Clark

SpaceX is set to end a two-month launch drought at Cape Canaveral with a blastoff Thursday night carrying a privately-funded Israeli moon lander, an Indonesian communications satellite and a U.S. Air Force surveillance payload into orbit.

NASA orbiter spots Chinese lander on the moon

February 18, 2019 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted China’s Chang’e 4 lander and rover on the far side of the moon in new images, as the Chinese robots explore the floor of Von Kármán crater.

SpaceX files protest of NASA’s Lucy launch contract awarded to ULA

February 15, 2019 Stephen Clark

SpaceX has filed a protest challenging a nearly $150 million NASA contract awarded to United Launch Alliance last month to send a robotic asteroid probe into space.

Experimental British satellite tests harpoon in orbit

February 15, 2019 Stephen Clark

A British satellite released from the International Space Station last year has successfully demonstrated a harpoon that could be used on future missions to clean up space debris, officials announced Friday.

NASA selects mission to probe the history of galaxies

February 14, 2019 Stephen Clark

NASA has selected a space telescope named SPHEREx for launch in 2023 on a mission to survey the sky in near-infrared wavelengths, collecting spectral data to study the origins of the universe and ices in our own galaxy that could help seed life on planets.

NASA declares Opportunity rover dead after 15 years on Mars

February 13, 2019 Stephen Clark

Eight months after last hearing from the Opportunity rover, NASA officials announced the end of the craft’s 15-year mission Wednesday, closing out an ambitious chapter of Mars exploration that proved the Red Planet once harbored running water and demonstrated the promise of mobile robotic scouts to survey other worlds.

CubeSat deployed from space station to test sample return technology

February 13, 2019 Stephen Clark

One of five CubeSats deployed from the International Space Station last month is testing a steerable drag brake that could find use in future smallsats to return experiment samples to the ground from low Earth orbit, or on low-cost micro-probes to explore other planets.

Watch a spectacular slow-motion replay of last week’s Ariane 5 launch

February 11, 2019 Stephen Clark

Arianespace and CNES, the French space agency, have released sensational slow-motion video from shielded engineering cameras at the Ariane 5 rocket’s launch pad in French Guiana, showing the launcher’s fiery evening takeoff Feb. 5 with communications satellites for Saudi Arabia and India.

Second Iranian satellite launch attempt in a month fails

February 11, 2019 Stephen Clark

Iran’s second try in less than a month to send a satellite into orbit apparently failed shortly after liftoff from a remote desert launch pad under daily surveillance from a fleet of commercial imaging spacecraft, according to U.S. government officials and independent analysts.