Falcon 9 Lamp is Touching Down in the Living Room

Many of us have been inspired by the videos of the Falcon 9 booster, tall as an office building, riding a pillar of flame down to a pinpoint landing at Kennedy Space Center or on one of SpaceX’s floating landing pads in the ocean. It’s not often that we get …read more

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Floating Spaceports for Future Rockets

While early prototypes for SpaceX’s Starship have been exploding fairly regularly at the company’s Texas test facility, the overall program has been moving forward at a terrific pace. The towering spacecraft, which CEO Elon Musk believes will be the key to building a sustainable human colony on Mars, has gone …read more

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SpaceX sends up the same recycled rocket for a record sixth time

SpaceX’s rocket landings have now become so routine that it’s easy to forget such a thing had never been accomplished five years ago. Its engineers’ recycling methods were in full swing again today, with the company sending up and welcoming back the sa… Continue reading SpaceX sends up the same recycled rocket for a record sixth time

NASA and SpaceX set date for Crew Dragon’s first routine ISS trip

The dust has barely settled on SpaceX’s history-making Demo-2 mission, in which a commercial spacecraft carried NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time, but already plans are underway for the vehicle’s next … Continue reading NASA and SpaceX set date for Crew Dragon’s first routine ISS trip

SpaceX Demo-2 mission ends with first splashdown in 45 years

History was made today as two NASA astronauts returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a privately built and operated spacecraft. At 2:48 pm EDT, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico of… Continue reading SpaceX Demo-2 mission ends with first splashdown in 45 years

Falcon 9 Beats Shuttle’s Reflight Record, But Still Has a Long Way to Go

Put simply, the goal of any reusable booster is to reduce the cost of getting a payload into space. The comparison is often made to commercial aviation: if you had to throw away the airliner after every flight, nobody could afford the tickets. The fact that the plane can be …read more

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SpaceX uses ships to catch both Falcon 9 fairings for the first time

Using a ship out at sea to catch pieces of falling pieces of rocket might not be the most sophisticated of SpaceX’s recovery techniques, but it is a key part of its mission to recycle as many materials as possible. The company has today ticked off this… Continue reading SpaceX uses ships to catch both Falcon 9 fairings for the first time

Spacing Out; OneWeb Rescue, Starlink Base Stations, And Rocket Tests

Another couple of weeks, and a fresh crop of space news to run through as a quick briefing of the latest in the skies above us.

The global positioning orbits are getting pretty crowded, with GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, the EU’s Galileo, Japan’s QZSS, and now with the launch of the …read more

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