Tag: Private Spaceflight

Blue Origin’s ninth crewed spaceflight will lift off this week, if all goes according to plan. Jeff Bezos‘ aerospace company announced today (Nov. 18) that it’s targeting Friday (Nov. 22) for the launch of NS-28, which will send “Space Gal” Emily Calandrelli and five other people to suborbital space. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket-capsule combo will lift off from the company’s West Texas spaceport on Friday during a window that opens at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT; 9:30 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch the action live here at…

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Blue Origin’s massive new rocket is getting closer to being ready to fly. The company shared a new photo of the two stages of its New Glenn rocket being joined together for the first time in the company’s facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. “GS-1 meets GS-2,” the company wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in a post accompanying the photo, in reference to the first (GS-1) and second (GS-2) stages of the new rocket. New Glenn is expected to make its maiden flight sometime in November, taking…

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Elon Musk will have a place in the second Trump administration. The SpaceX founder and CEO will lead the new “Department of Government Efficiency” along with entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening (Nov. 12). “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the Save America Movement,” Trump wrote in a statement on Tuesday (capitalization his). “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of…

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SpaceX has pulled some pieces of its Starship megarocket from the sea. On Sunday evening (Sept. 22), SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X a photo of dripping and damaged rocket hardware being lifted out of the ocean. The mangled metal is part of the first-stage booster that flew on the most recent Starship test flight, Musk said. “Like the ruins of a futuristic, long-dead civilization,” he wrote in another post a few hours later. SpaceX is developing Starship to get people and payloads to the moon, Mars…

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SpaceX has taken its dispute with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to Capitol Hill. On Tuesday (Sept. 17), the FAA announced that it plans to fine SpaceX $630,000 for allegedly skirting regulations on two launches last year. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk responded to the news that same day, declaring on X (formerly Twitter) that the company intends to sue the FAA “for regulatory overreach.”  Now, the company has sent a letter to Congress contesting the proposed fine and calling out the agency for moving too slowly. The two…

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to fine SpaceX more than $630,000 for allegedly failing to comply with regulations on two launches last year. “Safety drives everything we do at the FAA, including a legal responsibility for the safety oversight of companies with commercial space transportation licenses,” FAA Chief Counsel Marc Nichols said in an emailed statement today (Sept. 17).  “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences,” he added. The first launch cited by the FAA is PSN SATRIA, which lofted an…

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After an eventful five days in space, which included the first-ever commercial spacewalk, the private astronaut crew of Polaris Dawn is returning to Earth.  If all goes according to plan, the SpaceX Dragon capsule Resilience — orbital home to the four-person  over the past five days — will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida on Sunday, Sept. 15, at about 3:36 a.m. EDT (0736 GMT), SpaceX said in an update. The landing will mark the end of Polaris Dawn, a mission to…

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SpaceX’s Starship will be grounded for a while longer yet. Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — flew for the fourth time in June, and SpaceX has been gearing up for flight number five ever since. But that test mission is probably still at least 2.5 months away, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “SpaceX must meet all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements prior to FAA launch authorization,” agency officials said in an emailed statement to Space.com on Wednesday (Sept. 11). “A final license…

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The first-ever private spacewalk will happen early Thursday morning (Sept. 12), and you can watch the historic action live. The pioneering extravehicular activity (EVA) will be conducted by Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis, two members of the four-person Polaris Dawn mission, which launched to Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday morning (Sept. 10). The spacewalk is expected to start at 2:23 a.m. EDT (0623 GMT), according to SpaceX. You can watch it live here at Space.com or directly via the company. Coverage will begin around 1:20…

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SpaceX’s trailblazing Polaris Dawn mission will soon begin its daring trek into Earth orbit — and with it, the plunge through the belt of radiation wrapped around our planet. The four-person crew of civilians, led by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, will lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early on Tuesday (Sept. 10) after a series of launch delays attributed to technical issues and bad weather. Soon, the crew will attain a maximum height of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) — three times the altitude of the International Space…

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