Seth Kurkowski

Once again the big story this week will be the reattempt of Boeing’s CFT mission to the International Space Station. After a week of analysis, ULA is changing out a valve on the rockets upper stage which is what caused the abort last week.

Over the last few weeks, SpaceX has hit the major 20 flight milestone on not one but three separate boosters. The company is moving on and hoping to now get way more launches out of what was supposed to be a ten flight limit.

After an extremely smooth countdown and crew egress, ULA controllers called a scrub Starliner’s Crewed Flight Test a few hours before planned liftoff due to a misbehaving valve. While the problem is a known issue by ULA, it will take a few days to trouble shoot, meaning the next launch attempt won’t be until at least Friday.

After a long road of delays, technical failures, and two inflight tests, Boeing‘s Starliner is finally at the pad and ready to launch later today. The mission will be a major milestone for Boeing, who is desperate for a win right now, but it might show that the world has moved on from legacy providers.

In a report by Reuters, the publication uncovered SpaceX‘s continued high injury rates have yet to come down from years prior. For some locations, SpaceX is over nine times higher than the industry average.

By the end of the week the International Space Station will be fully ready to support Boeing Starliner’s Crewed Test Flight with an opening on the forward docking port on the station’s Harmony Module. This will be completed with the reshuffling of two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

This week SpaceX will attempt another three launch week, with two of those mission scheduled from the West Coast. The headline mission for the week will actually come out of China, a Long March 5 rocket is scheduled to liftoff Friday with the country’s next lunar sample return mission, this time from the far side of the Moon.

A staple of the airshow/fly-in season, EAA’s AirVenture is back again in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with headline performers like twin B-29s and the Canadian Forces Snowbirds.

Over the last few weeks NASA has announced a plethora of partnerships and contracts for lunar rovers that astronauts will eventually use on future Artemis missions. Those rovers will of course need a ride to the Moon, which will come in the like of cargo variants of NASA’s HLS landers, Starship and Blue Moon.

Last week Boeing and ULA rolled a Starliner spacecraft from the former’s facilities on Kennedy Space Center to the latter’s launch site on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. With that, final checkouts are underway before two NASA astronauts climb inside and fly it to the ISS and back.

This week we’re looking to be a rather busy one with a launch everyday from either SpaceX, China, and Rocket Lab up to Friday. China will be launching its next crew rotation to their space station and SpaceX might have a four launch week.

The FAA has made a new rule that any spacecraft that plans to reenter after launch must obtain its reentry license from the administration prior to launch. This was created out of safety concerns and experiences learned during granting Varda Space the first ever Part 450 reentry license.

One year ago SpaceX launched its first fully integrated Starship rocket, which in my opinion is the start of the Starship era of spaceflight. While that mission was far from 100% successful, this new era is truly changing the way people look at the future of heavy lift rockets.

This week Seth is joined with former NASA astronaut Terry Virts to discuss their experiences witnessing April’s total solar eclipse. To finish the discussion, Virts goes into detail about what it’s like taking photos from space and the workflow of getting them to NASA and out on social media.

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In what I’ve always viewed as a bold move by NASA, since 2021 Perseverance has been collecting Martian core samples for future return. The issue is a return plan wasn’t finalized or paid for before launch, which in recent years has been under attack by Congress who wants a lighter budget. On Monday NASA conceded to complaints that it’s too expensive.

This week we’re only seeing three launches, all of which are from SpaceX and two of those are for Starlink missions out of Florida. About what we expect from a company doing the majority of Earth’s launch capability.

You’ve probably had those eclipse glasses laying around for the last week, unsure of what to do with them and inching them closer and closer to the trash bin. But don’t! There’s a much better place to send them if you don’t plan on using them again.

Things are slowly falling into place for the Polaris Program‘s first mission, Polaris Dawn. The mission is nearing milestones that might finally give it a launch date that will actually hold.

Last Monday North America got to witness the most unique solar event that can ever happen, a total solar eclipse. If you didn’t get to travel to, or be lucky and just live in, the path of totality, you most likely missed out on the fun. So if you are determined to not miss the next one, where do you have to be and when is the next total solar eclipse?

Friday evening SpaceX launched a Starlink mission that while not newsworthy anymore, the booster it launched on was. B1062, first launched in 2020, has now reached the big 20 mission milestone.