Starship’s eighth flight was a lot like its seventh. SpaceX launched the eighth test flight of its Starship megarocket today (March 6), sending the 403-foot-tall (123 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Texas time). Seven minutes later, Starship’s huge first-stage booster, known … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The private Athena lunar lander is on its way to the moon. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off shortly after sunset this evening (Feb. 26), carrying Athena and NASA’s ride-along Lunar Trailblazer orbiter aloft against a darkening sky here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Athena — which was built … Read more
Sunday (March 2) is shaping up to be a delightful day for space explorers, as not one but two major NASA missions are expected to take to the skies — and interestingly, though the spacecraft associated with these missions are pretty different from one another, you might say they all have the same profession: cosmic … Read more
LITTLETON, Colorado — A university-led lunar orbiter designed to pinpoint the location of ice or liquid water trapped in rocks on the moon’s surface is nearly ready for takeoff. The Lunar Trailblazer is slated to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Feb. 26 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It … Read more
Firefly Aerospace’s first mission to the moon is nearly ready to fly. The company’s Blue Ghost lunar lander arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Monday (Dec. 16) for integration with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will launch the robotic probe — as well as the private Japanese moon lander Resilience … Read more