News – Page 94 – Spaceflight Now

Florida Starship pad construction ramps up with arrival of chopsticks carriage

January 6, 2023 Stephen Clark

The next piece of SpaceX’s growing Starship infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center arrived at Launch Complex 39A on Friday. A carriage apparatus for the Starship pad’s mechanized chopstick arm system rolled to the complex for installation on the launch pad tower.

Work begins to harvest Orion spacecraft hardware for Artemis 2 lunar flight

January 5, 2023 Stephen Clark

Fresh off the 1.4-million-mile Artemis 1 test flight around around the moon, NASA’s Orion spacecraft arrived Dec. 30 back at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians will offload propellants and payloads, and begin removing internal hardware destined to fly back to the moon with astronauts on the next Orion crew capsule in 2024.

SpaceX launches 114 small satellites on first mission of 2023

January 3, 2023 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s first launch of the year fired away from Cape Canaveral Tuesday and hauled 114 small satellites into polar orbit for operators in 23 countries, deploying a range of payloads for tech demo, Earth observation, and communication missions.

Space solar power experiment, 36 Planet imaging satellites on SpaceX rideshare mission

January 2, 2023 Stephen Clark

The 114 small satellites set for launch Tuesday on SpaceX’s first mission of the year include 36 spacecraft for Planet’s commercial remote sensing fleet, a space-based solar power experiment, and space tugs to piggyback payloads into different orbits.

Military officials forecast 87 launches from Florida’s Space Coast in 2023

January 2, 2023 Stephen Clark

The U.S. Space Force is preparing for as many as 87 launches from Florida’s Space Coast in 2023, including dozens more SpaceX missions and the expected debuts of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Relativity’s Terran 1 rockets.

SpaceX launch of Israeli satellite marks company’s 61st mission of 2022

December 30, 2022 Stephen Clark

SpaceX launched its 61st and final mission of 2022 Thursday night from California, placing an Israeli Earth-imaging satellite into orbit and tying a 1980 record for the most successful flights by a rocket family in a single year.

Live coverage: SpaceX launches Israeli satellite from California

December 30, 2022 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s final launch of the year has blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, with a Falcon 9 rocket boosting a $186 million Earth-imaging satellite into orbit for the Israeli company ImageSat International. Liftoff occurred at 11:38 p.m. PST Thursday (2:38 a.m. EST; 0738 GMT Friday), and the Falcon 9 booster returned to Vandenberg for landing less than 10 minutes later.

SpaceX launches first mission for Starlink Gen2 constellation

December 28, 2022 Stephen Clark

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Wednesday with 54 more Starlink internet satellites, a mission to begin populating a new orbital shell authorized by federal regulators earlier this month for the company’s Starlink Gen2 network.

Astronauts unfurl fourth roll-out solar array outside International Space Station

December 22, 2022 Stephen Clark

Another roll-out solar array was installed and deployed by astronauts Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada outside the International Space Station on on a spacewalk Thursday, a day later than previously planned after the space station needed to dodge a piece of space junk.

NASA’s InSight lander bows out after ground-shaking Mars mission

December 21, 2022 Clive Simpson

Dust-laden solar panels and darker Martian skies have finally sealed the fate of NASA’s InSight mission, the agency announced Wednesday, after the intrepid lander delivered its final message from Mars at the end of its history-making mission to reveal the secrets of the Red Planet’s interior.