India, NASA to cooperate on human spaceflight and planetary defense

India plans to build off its recent space successes and become an even bigger player in the final frontier. The nation recently landed on the moon for the first time, acing the first-ever touchdown near the lunar south pole with its Chandrayaan-3 mission. And India now has a solar probe aloft —  Aditya-L1, which launched on Sept. 2 to investigate some of the sun’s biggest mysteries. U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the scientists at the engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), for…

Read More

1 year after launch failure, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket remains grounded

It has now been a full year since Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle last left the ground. New Shepard last launched on Sept. 12, 2022, on an uncrewed research mission from Blue Origin‘s site in West Texas. About 65 seconds after liftoff, the vehicle’s reusable first-stage booster suffered a problem and crashed hard onto the desert floor. New Shepard’s capsule engaged its emergency escape system and landed safely under parachutes, its 36 research payloads intact. In March, Blue Origin announced the results of its anomaly investigation: The nozzle on…

Read More

SpaceX launches 21 new Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket

SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites early Tuesday (Sept. 12) and landed the returning rocket on a ship at sea. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 21 Starlink craft from California’s foggy Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday at 2:57 a.m. EDT (0657 GMT; 11:57 p.m. Sept. 11 local California time).  The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth as planned for a landing in the Pacific Ocean, on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, about 8.5 minutes after launch.  Related: Starlink satellite train:…

Read More