The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off Thursday night with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale satellite quartet in a successful flight from Cape Canaveral.
Credit: NASA TV
The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off Thursday night with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale satellite quartet in a successful flight from Cape Canaveral.
Credit: NASA TV
Despite NASA’s concerns about earlier thruster problems and multiple helium leaks in the ship’s propulsion pressurization system, the Starliner had no trouble undocking and moving away from the station at 6:04 p.m. EDT and executing a critical 59-second deorbit braking maneuver at 11:17 p.m. to drop out of orbit.
The first operational flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts aboard is set to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than Oct. 23, following a formal certification review to assess data from the Crew Dragon’s two-man test flight that concluded earlier this month, NASA said Friday.
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