Tag: commercial-space
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Firefly’s rocket suffers one of the strangest launch failures we’ve ever seen
Firefly Aerospace launched its two-stage Alpha rocket from California early Tuesday, but something went wrong about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, rendering the rocket unable to deploy an experimental satellite into orbit for Lockheed Martin. The Alpha rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles at 6:37 am…
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A rocket launch Monday night may finally jump-start Amazon’s answer to Starlink
The first 27 operational satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network lifted off from Florida’s Space Coast on Monday evening, the opening salvo in a challenge to SpaceX’s dominant Starlink global Internet service. Amazon’s Project Kuiper, costing up to $20 billion, will beam high-speed, low-latency broadband signals to consumers around the world. Monday’s milestone launch kicks…
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SpaceX just took a big step toward reusing Starship’s Super Heavy booster
SpaceX is having trouble with Starship’s upper stage after back-to-back failures, but engineers are making remarkable progress with the rocket’s enormous booster. The most visible sign of SpaceX making headway with Starship’s first stage—called Super Heavy—came at 9:40 am local time (10:40 am EDT; 14:40 UTC) Thursday at the company’s Starbase launch site in South…
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SpaceX just took a big step toward reusing Starship’s Super Heavy booster
SpaceX is having trouble with Starship’s upper stage after back-to-back failures, but engineers are making remarkable progress with the rocket’s enormous booster. The most visible sign of SpaceX making headway with Starship’s first stage—called Super Heavy—came at 9:40 am local time (10:40 am EDT; 14:40 UTC) Thursday at the company’s Starbase launch site in South…
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Four private astronauts launch on first human mission to fly over the poles
Four adventurers suited up and embarked on a first-of-a-kind trip to space Monday night, becoming the first humans to fly in polar orbit aboard a SpaceX crew capsule chartered by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire. The private astronauts rocketed into orbit atop a Falcon 9 booster from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:46 pm…
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Four private astronauts launch on first human mission to fly over the poles
Four adventurers suited up and embarked on a first-of-a-kind trip to space Monday night, becoming the first humans to fly in polar orbit aboard a SpaceX crew capsule chartered by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire. The private astronauts rocketed into orbit atop a Falcon 9 booster from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:46 pm…
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Four private astronauts launch on first human mission to fly over the poles
Four adventurers suited up and embarked on a first-of-a-kind trip to space Monday night, becoming the first humans to fly in polar orbit aboard a SpaceX crew capsule chartered by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire. The private astronauts rocketed into orbit atop a Falcon 9 booster from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:46 pm…
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The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lasted just 40 seconds
The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket didn’t last long on Sunday. The booster’s nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea. If officials at Isar Aerospace were…
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ESA finally has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?
The European Space Agency is inviting proposals to inject competition into the European launch market, an important step toward fostering a dynamic multiplayer industry officials hope, one day, will mimic that of the United States. The near-term plan for the European Launcher Challenge is for ESA to select companies for service contracts to transport ESA…
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This launcher is about to displace the V-2 as Germany’s largest rocket
Seven years ago, three classmates at the Technical University of Munich believed their student engineering project might hold some promise in the private sector. At the time, Daniel Metzler led a team of 40 students working on rocket engines and launching sounding rockets. Josef Fleischmann was on the team that won the first SpaceX Hyperloop…