SpaceX

SpaceX’s fully integrated Starship rocket stands at Launch Tower 1 at the Starbased facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, ahead of the launch of the Flight 7 mission. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now SpaceX is preparing to kick off the new year of suborbital flights around the world with a launch of its nearly 40-story-tall Starship rocket from southern Texas Thursday afternoon. The company is nearing the point at which it can transition to orbital flights with the two-stage launch vehicle, but is still in the process of iterating on the vehicle, from its height and flap design, to avionics and launch support systems. Liftoff of the Starship Flight 7 mission from the Starbase facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, is set for 4 p.m. CST (5 p.m. EST, 2200 UTC), the opening of a 60-minute launch wi...

A still image taken from video of what is reportedly the remnants of SpaceX’s Starship upper stage as seen from the vantage point of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Image: Alex Davenport SpaceX’s seventh flight of its Starship rocket was a combination of great success and catastrophic loss, with a catch of its Super Heavy booster at the launch tower and the failure of the Starship upper stage as it climbed to space. Beginning around seven minutes and 40 seconds into the flight, SpaceX’s on-screen telemetry data began to show one Raptor engine after another turn off on the Ship until the telemetry froze at eight minutes and 27 seconds. In a post to his social media site, X, SpaceX founder Elon Musk described what engineers believe at this early stage to be the issue. “Preliminary indication i...

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off the pad for the first time at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: Pete Carstens/MaxQ Productions for Spaceflight Now Blue Origin entered into the history books in the predawn hours of Thursday. The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, became the first to successfully reach orbit on their first launch with a new orbital-class rocket in the new era of commercial spaceflight that dawned in the last two decades. After dealing with an unplanned hold to chill its engines and a wayward boat entering the keep out zone, the New Glenn rocket, standing as tall as a 32-story building lumbered off the pad under the power of 3.9 million pounds of thrust. The seven BE-4 engines on the first stage booster roared to life at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703...

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander pictured atop a bespoke payload canister, which encased ispace’s Resilience lunar lander prior to encapsulation inside SpaceX’s Falcon 9 payload fairings. Image: SpaceX For the first time in lunar exploration, two robotic landers, from two different nations launched to the Moon on one rocket. But despite Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and Tokyo-based ispace sharing one SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the two missions are taking very different paths and timelines to reach the lunar surface. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened Jan. 15 at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 UTC). The flight was the 100th orbital launch for SpaceX from the historic pad formerly used by Apollo and the Space Shuttle. Minutes after deployment, Firefly confirm...

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station prior to the rocket’s inaugural flight on the NG-1 mission. Image: Blue Origin Update 3:20 a.m. EST (0820 UTC): Blue Origin scrubbed the launch. Blue Origin is preparing to step into a new chapter of rocketry, by debuting its first orbital class rocket, New Glenn. It will also attempt to recover the first stage booster on landing platform the Atlantic Ocean. The company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was targeting the inaugural launch of New Glenn during a three-hour window on Monday, Jan. 13. However, launch teams ran into what they described as a “vehicle subsystem issue” that took longer to potentially resolve than they had time available in the window. A new launch date was still being ...