Veteran astronaut Kate Rubin’s trip will ensure a U.S. presence on the International Space Station while NASA strives to complete the certifications of a second commercial crew launch provider.
Four days after launching astronauts for a flight test of its commercial space taxi, SpaceX fired off another Falcon 9 rocket to resume building out its Starlink satellite network for high-speed internet service.
The U.S. arm of Japanese satellite servicing startup Astroscale is expanding into geostationary orbit by acquiring the assets of Israeli company Effective Space Solutions.
Arnold Aldrich, a 35-year NASA executive whose guidance touched U.S. human space exploration from Mercury through the space shuttle, died on May 28 in a Virginia hospital following a brief battle with cancer.
Known as the “impact origin of life hypothesis,” this process may have occurred elsewhere in the inner Solar System, including Mars and perhaps other planetary systems.
“It’s truly a critical moment in the development of the space economy and a new era of private human spaceflight,” NASDAQ’s president and CEO said just before the astronauts rang the bell in the station’s U.S. segment.
“Things worked exactly the way we expected them to work," Demo-2 astronaut Doug Hurley said. " It’s a pretty awe-inspiring trip so far, pretty humbling,”
“I’m very confident that we’ll continue to fund NASA and fund NASA aggressively,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said shortly after SpaceX's Demo-2 mission successfully docked with the International Space Station.
The 3:22 p.m. liftoff marked SpaceX’s first launch with people aboard and the first U.S. human orbital launch since the final STS-135 shuttle mission in July 2011.
A SpaceX Starship prototype exploded and was destroyed on a test stand in Boca Chica, Texas, on May 29, joining three previous company test vehicles lost during pressurization checks.
NASA’s return to flying astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station, delayed on May 27 due to weather constraints, has required the FAA to impose temporary flight restrictions (TFR) in the launch area that it has not used since the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.
NASA and SpaceX are retargeting launch of the crewed Demo-2 flight test for 3:22 p.m. EDT May 30 after dicey weather at Kennedy Space Center prompted a scrub 16 min. before a liftoff attempt on May 27.
SpaceX plans to evaluate a new dimming feature called VisorSat for its growing global constellation of Starlink broadband connectivity satellites, whose disruptive brightness in the night sky has raised the ire of professional and amateur astronomers.
With preparations for SpaceX’s first human spaceflight drawing to a close, the company's President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell talks with Aviation Week & Space Technology space editor Irene Klotz about lessons learned for Starship and plans for the rollout of Starlink.
