Enlarge / The number of days between the first 50 Falcon 9 launches, the second 50, and the last 50. (credit: Eric Berger) SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket on June 4, 2010, nearly a dozen years ago. During those first years, the company grappled with a whole host of challenges, from things as […]
Enlarge / The Moon is safe from Falcon 9 rockets. (credit: NASA) About three weeks ago Ars Technica first reported that astronomers were tracking the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, and were increasingly confident that it would strike the Moon on March 4. This story set off a firestorm of media activity. Much […]
Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches on a pillar of fire in January 2022. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX has been launching Falcon 9 rockets thick and fast of late. With 10 launches since the beginning of December, the company has flown rockets at a rate greater than one mission a week. And another launch could […]
Enlarge / The Transporter 3 mission is on the launch pad and ready to go. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) SpaceX will seek to launch its “Transporter-3” mission into low Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday morning. The rocket has a 29-minute launch window, which opens at 10:25 am ET (15:25 […]
Enlarge / The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft aboard. (credit: NASA) Weather permitting, a Falcon 9 rocket will launch a key asteroid-deflection mission for NASA on Tuesday night from California. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART mission, will seek to demonstrate the capability to change an […]
Liftoff! SpaceX and the 45th Space Launch Delta find a hole in the weather to get the Transporter-2 mission off the ground. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ] SpaceX launched its 20th Falcon 9 rocket of the year on Wednesday, and the booster lofting the Transporter-2 mission completed yet another successful flight to orbit. This launch continues to […]
SpaceX’s second Transporter mission is scheduled to lift off at 2:56 pm EDT, carrying 88 spacecraft on a southerly trajectory from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ] SpaceX is preparing to launch its second dedicated rideshare mission for its Falcon 9 rocket, named Transporter-2, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday […]
Enlarge / The GPS III SV-05 vehicle is encapsulated in the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing. (credit: Lockheed Martin) A few years ago one of SpaceX’s earliest employees, Hans Koenigsmann, told me one of the company’s goals was to take the “magic” out of rocket launches. It’s just physics, he explained. As its Falcon 9 […]
Enlarge / Photo of the Starlink payload on top of a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida this week. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX will attempt to launch another batch of 60 Starlink satellites today—if anyone is counting, this is the 28th overall launch of operational Starlink satellites—at 2:59 pm ET (18:59 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force […]
Enlarge / Screenshot of a presentation from China’s main state-owned rocket manufacturer, CALT. (credit: Weibo/CALT) This weekend, China celebrated its sixth “National Space Day” in Nanjing, a capital city in one of the country’s eastern provinces. As part of the festivities, Chinese space officials highlighted the Chang’e-5 mission’s recent return of lunar samples, some of which […]