Tag: commercial-space
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Blue Origin practices crew operations on suborbital test flight
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated April 15 with Bezos tweet. Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster lifts off at 12:51 p.m. EDT (11:51 a.m. CDT; 1651 GMT) Wednesday. Credit: Blue Origin Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, took another step toward launching people to the edge of space Wednesday with a suborbital test flight of…
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Astrobotic selects SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch robotic lunar lander
A Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off in April 2019 with the Arabsat 6A commercial communications satellite. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Spaceflight Now A commercial lunar lander built by Astrobotic will launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in late 2023 to deliver a water-hunting NASA rover to the moon’s…
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Blue Origin to rehearse for human passengers on suborbital flight
A view of Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas. Credit: Blue Origin Finally on the cusp of launching people to the edge of space, Blue Origin plans to use a suborbital test flight of its New Shepard booster and crew capsule Wednesday to rehearse boarding and recovery procedures for future missions with paying passengers.…
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Northrop Grumman servicer docks with active satellite in geosynchronous orbit
A visible narrow field-of-view camera on the MEV 2 spacecraft captured this view of Intelsat 10-02 from a range of about 100 feet, or 30 meters. Credit: Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman’s second robotic life extension spacecraft docked with an Intelsat satellite in geosynchronous orbit Monday, the first link-up between a commercial servicing mission and an…
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SpaceX to ramp up Vandenberg launch cadence with Starlink missions
File photo of a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on Jan. 11, 2019. Credit: SpaceX After a lull in launches from America’s primary West Coast rocket base, SpaceX is set to resume a regular cadence of missions from Vandenberg Air Force Base as soon as July to deploy Starlink internet satellites…
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Musk says methane leak doomed latest Starship test flight
File photo of the Starship SN8 prototype, which flew last year, with three Raptor engines. Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday that a “relatively small” methane leak caused the explosion of the company’s latest Starship test rocket last week on an experimental flight over South Texas. The 164-foot-tall (50-meter) Starship test vehicle,…
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Live coverage: SpaceX crew capsule moves to new space station docking port
Live coverage of the relocation of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft to a new docking port outside the International Space Station. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter. Editor’s Note: NASA TV’s live video coverage of the Crew Dragon relocation maneuver begins at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT) Monday.
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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule swaps docking ports on space station
The Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft closes in for docking Monday at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now In the home stretch of nearly a half-year on the International Space Station, four astronauts suited up and rode their SpaceX-owned Crew Dragon “Resilience” spaceship to a new docking port outside the orbiting research lab Monday,…
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Station astronauts prep for relocation of SpaceX crew capsule
Astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, and Soichi Noguchi put on their SpaceX pressure suits for a fit check last week in preparation for relocation of the Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft outside the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/JAXA Commander Mike Hopkins and his three crewmates will board their Crew Dragon “Resilience” capsule Monday for…
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Final two passengers named for first all-civilian mission to orbit Earth
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Billionaire Jared Isaacman, physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, science educator Sian Proctor, and engineer Chris Sembroski will fly into low Earth orbit on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft later this year. Credit: SpaceX The billionaire financing the SpaceX flight that will carry the first non-professional “everyday people” into orbit…