Tag: Human Landing System
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SpaceX’s Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results. The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall…
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NASA Administrator teases further Artemis program updates in one-on-one interview
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (right) speaks with Spaceflight Now Reporter Will Robinson-Smith (left) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to discuss the Artemis program and other agency initiatives. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now NASA has it’s sights set on launching the Artemis 2 mission no earlier than April 1. The determination came following the conclusion of a…
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Former NASA Administrators urge space agency to rethink plans for Artemis Moon lander
Mike French (left) hosted a fireside chat with former NASA administrators Jim Bridenstine (center) and Charles Bolden (right) at the 2025 von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. Image: American Astronautical Society via livestream Two former NASA Administrators called on the space agency to rethink its plans to land astronauts on the Moon using…
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Blue Origin details lunar exploration progress amid Artemis 3 contract shakeup
An artist’s rendering of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on the surface of the Moon. Graphic: Blue Origin Correction Oct. 29: Fixed reference to the engines on the Lunar Transporter from BE-4 to BE-7. Blue Origin is still several years off from its currently contracted mission to bring astronauts to the Moon’s…
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Here’s the secret to how Firefly was able to nail its first lunar landing
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon’s surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface. These are all important achievements, gathering data…
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Launch preview: SpaceX to launch Starship Flight 6 test mission from Starbase in southern Texas
SpaceX fueled its fully integrated Starship rocket at its Starbase facilities on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in preparation for the Flight 6 suborbital test mission. Image: SpaceX After launching three Falcon 9 rockets in less than 20 hours, SpaceX is preparing to use its fourth and final active launchpad in the United States to launch…
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SpaceX targets Starship Flight 6 launch on November 18
A merging of multiple photographs of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster as it made its way down to be caught my the ‘Mechazilla’ launch tower during the Starlink Flight 5 mission on Oct. 13, 2024. Image: SpaceX Less than a month after launching its Starship rocket and catching its booster, SpaceX is targeting a sixth test…
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Starship booster catch brings NASA, SpaceX closer to Artemis 3 Moon landing
Super Heavy Booster 12 returns to the pad it launched from just seven minutes earlier. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now. NASA’s plan to return humans to the surface of the Moon needs several puzzle pieces to come together in time, one of which is the lunar lander itself. For the first two planned crewed…
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SpaceX accomplishes first soft splashdown of Starship, Super Heavy Booster on Flight 4 mission
For a fourth time in program history, SpaceX launches its Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in southern Texas. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now Update 2:32 p.m. EDT: Added mission details. For a fourth time in a little more than a year, SpaceX launched a test mission of its massive Starship rocket from its development facility…
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Surviving reentry is the key goal for SpaceX’s fourth Starship test flight
After three test flights, SpaceX has shown that the world’s most powerful rocket can reach space. Now, engineers must demonstrate the company’s next-generation Starship vehicle can get back home. This will be the central objective for the fourth Starship test flight, which could happen as soon as early June, according to Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder…