An independent review of the first — and so far, only — piloted flight of Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft concluded that the test represented a potentially life-threatening “Type A” mishap resulting from multiple technical problems and management miscues, NASA officials said Thursday. The findings prompted NASA’s new chief to make …
After three catastrophic in-flight failures in a row, SpaceX readied a huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket for launch Sunday evening from the Texas Gulf Coast to put a variety of upgrades to the test and to deliberately stress the vehicle to learn more about its capabilities. Test flight No. 10 was …
Running a day late, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Friday on a mission to deliver a fresh three-man one-woman crew to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:43 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as mission control kept a close eye on …
SpaceX launched twin satellites for NASA Wednesday that will study how the electrically-charged solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, creating constantly changing and occasionally dangerous “space weather” affecting satellites, electrical grids and other critical systems. The identical TRACERS satellites will operate in the magnetosphere, “the region around our Earth …
A wealthy Chinese-born bitcoin entrepreneur, a Norwegian cinematographer, a German robotics expert and an Australian adventurer blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday, kicking off the first crewed flight over the North and South poles. Using a first stage booster making its sixth fight — another first for …
Two long-delayed Starliner astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Tuesday to finally close out a repeatedly extended 286-day odyssey in space. They shared the ride home with two outgoing space station crewmates, Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut …
SpaceX launched its huge Starship rocket on the program’s eighth test flight Thursday, but a malfunction of some sort triggered multiple upper stage engine shutdowns and the vehicle failed to reach its planned sub-orbital altitude, breaking apart in a spectacular shower of debris. It was the second failure in a …
Contrary to a recent social media post from President Trump, Starliner astronaut Sunita Williams says she and crewmate Barry “Butch” Wilmore have not been “virtually abandoned” in space, despite a mission that’s been extended from a little more than one week to more than nine months. “I don’t think I’m …
SpaceX launched its huge Super Heavy-Starship mega rocket on its seventh test flight Thursday, successfully “catching” the first stage booster back at its firing stand but losing its new-generation Starship upper stage spacecraft, which apparently broke up as it was reaching space. Telemetry from the Starship froze eight minutes …
The unoccupied space-facing port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module is pictured several hours before the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft would relocate there after undocking from Harmony’s forward port. NASA Johnson Space Center In the race to conquer the cosmos, the greatest challenge to space exploration might be the …
