Tag: SpaceX
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Year in Space: Jeff Bezos and his billionaire rivals finally usher in the age of commercial spaceflight
Jeff Bezos uncorks the bubbly after riding Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship. (Blue Origin Photo) For 25 years, I’ve been recapping the top stories about space and looking forward to next year’s trends on the final frontier — and for most of that time, the dawn of the era of commercial spaceflight has been…
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SpaceX continues to break reuse records and reach new milestones in 2021
Having launched 31 orbital Falcon 9 missions and four suborbital Starship tests, 2021 was the most active year for SpaceX to date. These launches included a number of new reuse records, including flying a booster for the eleventh time, flying the same booster twice in under a month, flying a fairing half for the fifth…
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NASA, SpaceX launch CRS-24 to the International Space Station
NASA and SpaceX launched the Commercial Resupply Services 24 (CRS-24) mission to the International Space Station (ISS) early Tuesday morning aboard a SpaceX Cargo Dragon 2 vehicle. Liftoff occurred at 5:07 AM EST (10:07 UTC) on Tuesday, December 21, from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Following launch and separation,…
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Turksat-5B rides second of three Falcon 9 launches in three days
Following a successful Starlink mission from Vandenberg, California, SpaceX has launched a second Falcon 9 mission Saturday, this time from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The second of three missions planned for just three days will carry the Turksat-5B communications satellite to GTO (geostationary transfer orbit). The launch occurred Saturday evening on December 18 at the opening…
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NASA promotes East Coast Starship option at LC-49 following SpaceX interest
The prospect of Starship making its mark on the Space Coast entered another level this week when NASA revealed it would conduct environmental assessments on LC-49 to support Starship launch and landing operations. With SpaceX already confirming they will restart work on a Starship pad inside 39A, the potential of a second site at LC-49…
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SpaceX Falcon 9 completes rare 53 degree inclination launch from Vandenberg
In the company’s third-to-last launch of 2021, SpaceX deployed another group of Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit early on Saturday morning. The Starlink Group 4-4 mission launched 52 Starlink satellites into a 53.22° inclination orbit at 4:41 AM PST (12:41 UTC) Saturday morning. The mission lifted off from SLC-4E (Space Launch Complex 4 East)…
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NASA, SpaceX launch IXPE x-ray observatory atop Falcon 9
NASA and SpaceX have launched the revolutionary Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space observatory from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Thursday morning atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 1:00 a.m. EST (06:00 UTC). IXPE is a 325 kg, three-telescope polarized x-ray observatory. A joint venture between NASA and the Italian Space…
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Starship to stand on the shoulders of Saturn V and Shuttle at 39A
Elon Musk has confirmed Starship will add another chapter in Launch Complex 39A’s incredible history at the Kennedy Space Center. Although plans have always involved the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), early work on a pad for Starship at 39A has been mothballed since 2019, as SpaceX placed its entire focus on Starbase in Texas. However,…
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Crewed missions, new modules, and orbital debris — the ISS’s busy November
November was an eventful month for the International Space Station (ISS) and its crew members. From spacecraft departures and arrivals, new modules, science experiments, and close calls with orbital spacecraft debris, the Expedition 65 and 66 crews stayed busy aboard the orbiting laboratory. The ISS and its crew kicked off November with the docking of…
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SpaceX enters busy December with Starlink launch from Florida
Kicking off a busy end to the company’s 2021 launch campaign, SpaceX successfully launched a group of Starlink satellites from Florida on Thursday evening. The Group 4-3 mission, carrying 48 Starlink satellites and two rideshare payloads to low Earth orbit, lifted off from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:12 PM EST…