Ball Aerospace – Spaceflight Now

Observers spot top secret satellite launched by SpaceX earlier this month

May 24, 2017

A network of amateur skywatchers and satellite observers have located a classified spacecraft owned by the National Reconnaissance Office, a U.S. government intelligence agency, in low Earth orbit after its launch May 1 from Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX successfully boosts top secret U.S. government satellite into space

May 1, 2017

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired into space from Florida’s Atlantic coastline Monday with a clandestine payload for a U.S. government spy agency, then returned to Cape Canaveral for a pinpoint landing.

Video: Liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket viewed from KSC press site

May 1, 2017

Check out a view of the Falcon 9 launch Monday from our camera at the Kennedy Space Center press site about three miles from pad 39A.

Watch spectacular video of Monday’s Falcon 9 blastoff and landing

May 1, 2017

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off from the historic seaside launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday, powered a classified NRO spy satellite into space, then the launcher’s first stage descended to a vertical landing at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

SpaceX launch scrubbed in final minute of countdown

April 30, 2017

SpaceX scrubbed an attempt to launch a commercial Falcon 9 rocket Sunday less than a minute before liftoff, blaming a sensor issue on the vehicle’s first stage and pushing back the company’s first national security mission for the U.S. government at least 24 hours.

Environmental testing underway for JPSS 1 launching in January

April 23, 2016

The next American polar-orbiting weather satellite that will feed long-range forecasts and track environmental trends has slipped into space-like testing ahead of launch.

Kepler telescope recovered from spacecraft emergency

April 11, 2016

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is stable and out of emergency mode, officials said Monday, and the observatory is downlinking data to help engineers determine what caused it to suspend science operations last week.

Kepler space telescope in emergency mode

April 9, 2016

Mission controllers are trying to diagnose a problem that put NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting observatory in emergency mode nearly 75 million miles from Earth this week.

NASA might pick two Discovery missions, but at a price

October 5, 2015

A senior NASA official said Monday the agency could select two new robotic planetary science missions next year for launch in the early 2020s, and the five finalists favor Venus and asteroid research.