Derek Wise

This week, the focus has been on Blue Origin. On Tuesday, they completed the first crewed flight of New Shepard, flying the oldest and youngest person to ever visit space.

While the news this week primarily focused on Blue Origin’s flight to space on Tuesday, SpaceX has continued to work towards the first flight of Starship Super Heavy. This week, Super Heavy had its first static fire, while Starship may see some slight design changes moving forward.

It has been over a month since Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos announced he was flying to space. After decades of development, and many test flights of the New Shepard rocket, the day finally arrived.

SpaceX has stood out from other rocket companies in their determination to reuse their Falcon 9 boosters as much as possible. Below are some FAQs of booster reuse.

This week, the fourth crew member to fly on New Shepard was announced, A Shortfall of Gravitas arrived in Florida, and Astronaut Doug Hurley announced his retirement.

This week on Twitter, Elon addressed some major planned improvements to the constellation of Starlink internet satellites, and the advantages Starlink has over traditional internet connections.

Boeing’s Starliner Capsule for Orbital Flight Test 2 began its rollout from the company’s processing facility to ULA’s vertical integration facility. The capsule has been secured to the Atlas V rocket which will launch it to the International Space Station at the end of the month.

SpaceX’s latest droneship left Port Fourchon, Louisiana where it was constructed last Friday, and this morning, arrived in Port Canaveral Florida.

Today was a great day for Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin. Bezos is making a $200 million dollar donation to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, while the charity Club for the Future is making 19 $1 million grants to space-related organizations.

This has been a busy week in spaceflight. Many of the major space companies have had notable events; from Richard Branson’s flight to space with Virgin Galactic to Relativity Space’s strongback install.

While the focus in space this week has been on Virgin Galactic, Elon still shared many notable pieces of information about SpaceX on Twitter.

The last few weeks have seen some fierce competition and mudslinging between private spaceflight companies. From Elon Musk’s criticisms of ULA and Blue Origin, to Blue Origin’s criticism of Virgin Galactic, there has been very little peace on Space Twitter recently. That’s why Elon Musk’s recent reply to Richard Branson was so nice to see.

When this SpaceX’s droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, left Port Fourchon this morning, we thought it was just for sea trials. Based on the ship’s most recent movement, it seems like ASOG is already on its way to Florida.

We’ve been following the construction of SpaceX’s latest autonomous droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), for the past few months. Early this morning, ASOG started its first sea trial just outside of Port Fourchon, and now Elon Musk shared an aerial video of the ship.

Recently, an Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft believed to be carrying an Atlas V booster took off from Huntsville, Alabama on its way to Lompoc, California.

Since we last covered Ingenuity, shortly after its sixth flight, it has been hard at work exploring the Martian surface. Ingenuity has certainly proved useful to Martian exploration, making these flights look routine.

This has been a busy week for space news. We’ve had three launches, billionaires announcing their flights to space, SLS pathfinder is on the move, and Wally Funk will fly to space very soon.

Starting with Elon’s 50th birthday on Monday, he’s been extremely active on Twitter. This busy week in space news has featured a lot of back and forth between the billionaire owners of the industry.

Yesterday, SpaceX launched the Transporter-2 mission, their second dedicated rideshare mission. The Falcon 9 took flight from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and carried 88 satellites into Sun-Synchronous Orbit.

While this week has been devoid of launches, it was far from an uneventful week in space news. We’ve had spacewalks occurring at the ISS, the arrival of ULA’s Atlas V booster for CFT, and brand new exclusive updates on SpaceX’s newest droneship.

Elon Musk is known for his online antics and market-moving jokes. His Twitter account also provides a wealth of information.