Seth Kurkowski

The Wall Street Journal reports that SpaceX emailed employees not to travel to Brazil for business or leisure as it continues to be entangled in an X ban by the nation’s supreme court. Non-Brazilian employees were also reportedly relocated quietly.

SpaceXers have been hard at work the last few months, not just getting a second launch tower in place, but making modifications to the company’s first tower. All this is planned for SpaceX‘s next Starship launch, which we expect will feature the first “catch” of a rocket booster.

Blue Origin‘s newly constructed landing barge arrived at Port Canaveral earlier today. Named after Jeff Bezos’ mother, Jacklyn, it will support at-sea landings and recoveries of the company’s New Glenn rocket.

NASA announced in a short statement that the Europa Clipper mission will be able to move past its transistor issue and move on towards launch. The mission will have its next major development milestone next Monday before finally saying “yes” to launch.

UPDATE: The FAA has cleared SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 launches while the mishap investigation continues.

For the second time this year, SpaceX‘s workhorse rocket, and the most launched rocket in the world, is grounded after the booster failed to successfully land on its drone ship out in the ocean. This triggered a mishap investigation by the FAA, which means SpaceX won’t be able to launch again until it can show it won’t cause any risk to public safety.

Over the weekend, NASA made its decision that Boeing’s Starliner would not be safe enough to risk returning its crew from space. Instead, the agency has decided the two astronauts who flew up to space on it will return with Crew-9 on SpaceX’s Dragon early next year.

It’s a busy week for us here following the spaceflight industry. Polaris Dawn‘s rocket and crew are ready for launch, SpaceX has three Starlink missions lined up, and Blue Origin plans to fly its NS-26 rocket with customers out of Texas.

SpaceX finished construction of its second launch tower down at Starbase, Texas for its Starship rocket. This comes hopefully a few weeks out from the next launch of the company’s next generation rocket.

On Monday, the four members of the Polaris Dawn crew arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center ahead of its launch next week. The crew will finish up their training at SpaceX’s facilities at the cape as they prepare to push what is possible by commercial spaceflight.

In what was believed to be the final strand of tests before attempting its first orbital launch, Rocket Factory Augsburg suffered an anomaly during a hot fire test of its first stage and a loss of the vehicle. So what happens now for European launch?

This week will be another week of Starlink launches from SpaceX after a short break from the company to launch some missions commercially, how nice of them. With that, according to the current launch manifest, two Starlink missions are scheduled to lift off from the same launch pad in less than three days.

In an update to the media this week, NASA reiterated many points it said in an earlier update as it works through more data before making a final decision on the Starliner CFT spacecraft. For now, Starliner’s crew are in limbo as to what how and when they will return home.

A new study has shown that the once “near-term” collision between Andromeda and our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is now only a 50-50 chance in the next 10 billion years. So if you were preparing an intergalactic bug out to avoid such a disaster, it might not be needed.

SpaceX announced Monday that a Chinese crypto entrepreneur purchased a flight on Dragon that will fly around Earth’s poles. The mission will feature crew members from three other countries, none from the US, and could launch as soon as late 2024.

CNBC reported the industry leading commercial launcher has violated basic water treatment regulations with its Starship deluge system in Starbase, Texas. While SpaceX has denied the report, the FAA has postponed its environmental review public meetings for an unknown reason, and both Texas and Federal agencies have reported violations per CNBC.

We have a total for four launches this week currently on the schedule, we’ll see if that changes. Two of those are from SpaceX and shocking, even myself, neither are for the company’s Starlink constellation. The headliner this week will be Russia‘s Progress MS-28 resupply mission to the ISS on Wednesday.

NASA‘s mood toward’s the safety of returning Boeing‘s Crewed Flight Test crew back on Starliner has switched from steadfast support to plans to use SpaceX Dragon for a return flight. However, this has caused drastic changes to both SpaceX‘s and NASA’s launched schedules using its Crew Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX showed off its new version of Starship‘s methane powered rocket engines over the weekend. The new Raptor 3 engine is dramatically cleaner and more powerful then what SpaceX was using on its first Starship missions.

Former NASA astronaut and now Arizona senator, Mark Kelly, is on the short list to potentially become Vice President Harris’ running mate. As head of the National Space Council, his potential nomination has spurred some excitement in the spaceflight community.