Tag: SpaceX
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Patience a key ingredient in Orbcomm’s new satellite fleet
Orbcomm’s 11 satellites aboard the Falcon 9 rocket are seen here before encapsulation inside the payload fairing. Credit: Orbcomm/SpaceX Nearly a decade after Orbcomm raised the money to pay for a second-generation satellite fleet to drastically expand the company’s reach, the $230 million program is finally primed for completion after Monday’s launch of a Falcon…
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Patience a key ingredient in Orbcomm’s new satellite fleet
Orbcomm’s 11 satellites aboard the Falcon 9 rocket are seen here before encapsulation inside the payload fairing. Credit: Orbcomm/SpaceX Nearly a decade after Orbcomm raised the money to pay for a second-generation satellite fleet to drastically expand the company’s reach, the $230 million program is finally primed for completion after Monday’s launch of a Falcon…
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Rocket landing at Cape Canaveral planned after SpaceX launch
Artist’s concept of a Falcon 9 booster stage descending to a landing site at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX Assuming SpaceX’s plans come to fruition, a Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral on Sunday will end with a vertical rocket-assisted landing at an abandoned Cold War-era launch facility a few miles away. SpaceX confirmed the rocket’s…
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SpaceX gets set for Falcon 9’s return to flight – and Florida landing attempt
SpaceX is getting ready to launch its Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. (Credit: SpaceX) SpaceX is planning to launch its Falcon 9 rocket for the first time in nearly six months on Sunday, and says it will try flying the first-stage booster back to Florida for a landing for the first time. The Falcon 9…
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SpaceX Falcon 9 Static Fires ahead of OG2 RTF mission
SpaceX has conducted the key milestone of a Static Fire test at its Space Launch Complex – 40 (SLC-40) pad on Friday. The debut launch of the upgraded “Full Thrust” Falcon 9 is set to loft eleven ORBCOMM-2 (OG2) satellites, marking the rocket’s Return To Flight. The launch date is now scheduled as December 20,…
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SpaceX eyes Dec. 19 for first launch since June
File photo of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX is targeting Dec. 19 for a critical commercial launch that will double as the debut flight of an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket and the company’s return-to-flight mission after a failure six months ago halted SpaceX’s busy launch manifest. Final preparations are underway inside SpaceX’s rocket…
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SpaceX aims to resume Falcon 9 flights in mid-December
File photo of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket before launch of its first mission for Orbcomm in July 2014. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX has shipped to Cape Canaveral the first Falcon 9 booster equipped with upgrades to haul heavier cargoes to orbit, aiming for a mid-December launch in the space transport company’s first mission since a June…
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Bezos-backed Blue Origin achieves rocket landing
A suborbital rocket booster built by Blue Origin, an entrepreneurial space firm founded by Internet tycoon Jeff Bezos, streaked into space in the skies over West Texas and descended to a pinpoint propulsive touchdown on a landing pad, the company announced Tuesday. The landing makes the New Shepard rocket, named in honor of Mercury astronaut…
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SpaceX receives firm order for its first crew flight
Artist’s concept of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Credit: SpaceX Fresh off a major design review, SpaceX’s human-rated Dragon spaceship has received the first of up to six firm mission orders from NASA under the company’s $2.6 billion commercial crew contract. The structure of the commercial crew deals with SpaceX and Boeing give each company at…
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SpaceX’s Elon Musk gets in the Thanksgiving spirit on ‘The Big Bang Theory’
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, surprises Howard Wolowitz (played by Simon Helberg) on the CBS TV series “The Big Bang Theory.” (Credit: CBS) You wouldn’t think Elon Musk was a warm and fuzzy guy, based on this year’s biography of the hard-driving CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, but on this week’s…