Mission Reports
NASA
Atlas 5
Boeing plans second Starliner test flight in December or January
Boeing said Tuesday it is “making excellent progress” toward launching a second unpiloted test flight of its Starliner crew capsule to the International Space Station by the end of this year or in early January, setting the stage for the first Starliner demonstration mission with astronauts in mid-2021.
Mission Reports
Engineers troubleshooting small space station air leak
Engineers are troubleshooting a small air leak aboard the International Space Station that was discovered last September, NASA reported Thursday. While it poses no safety threat, the lab’s three-man crew plans to seal themselves in the Russian segment of the station this weekend to help engineers pin down the leak’s location.
Mission Reports
Ariane 5
Stunning imagery highlights weekend Ariane 5 launch
Views from an airliner, close-up high-speed launch pad cameras, and photographers around the Guiana Space Center in the jungle of South America show the twilight launch of a European Ariane 5 rocket Saturday with three commercial satellites heading for orbits more than 22,000 miles over the equator.
Falcon Heavy
Ariane 5
Debuting upgrades, Ariane 5 rocket deploys three U.S.-built satellites in orbit
An Ariane 5 rocket delivered a robotic space tug and a pair of commercial communications satellites into orbit Saturday following a fiery blastoff from French Guiana, debuting new upgrades in Arianespace’s first mission since temporarily suspending launch operations earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ariane 5
Live coverage: Ariane 5 rocket launches three satellites from French Guiana
Two weeks after a sensor problem forced a delay, an Ariane 5 rocket blasted off at 6:04 p.m. EDT (2204 GMT) Saturday from French Guiana with two commercial communications satellites to cover the United States and Japan, and a Northrop Grumman-built robotic satellite servicing mission designed to link up with another spacecraft in geostationary orbit.
Falcon 9
NASA sets Oct. 23 as target launch date for first operational Crew Dragon mission
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.
Mission Reports
Penultimate piece of NASA’s first SLS rocket arrives at Kennedy Space Center
One of the final pieces for the first test flight of NASA’s huge Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket recently arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, joining other elements already at the Florida spaceport awaiting shipment of the SLS core stage once it completes testing at a NASA facility in Mississippi.