Seth Kurkowski

With the week wrapping up, here’s what NASA is presenting to the public at EAA Oshkosh 2024. Full of research and development, NASA’s Bob Pearce, Associate Administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, gave us some background into ongoing and upcoming projects.

SpaceX has been cleared by the FAA to resume flight operations for its Falcon 9 rocket, even though the company’s investigation hasn’t yet been fully closed. SpaceX released a statement detailing what caused the failure of its second stage earlier this month and a short term fix ahead of Saturday’s early morning Starlink launch.

Blue Origin announced Wednesday its crew for the NS-26 missions. On board will be several high achieving and and lucky individuals that will get the chance to fly and feel weightlessness above the Karman Line. One of the crew members, a daughter of a previous participant, will become the youngest woman to reach 100 km.

Back in 2021, the Department of Transportation set in motion a plan for the US aviation sector to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. NASA, the government’s go to for civilian aviation research, discussed its advancements, challenges, and predictions on hybrid/electric aircraft at EAA Oshkosh this week.

Next month SpaceX is planning to launch the next crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. In case you forgot, here’s a quick recap of who’s going to be on top of that Falcon 9 rocket come liftoff.

The X-59 has been under development for years now. While its first flight is hopefully coming later this year, what do all the program’s test pilots do when there’s no plane to fly? The X-59’s lead test pilot Nils Larson and his partner Jim Less gave a good explanation with what has kept them busy.

We only have two known launches this week and both will be coming from SpaceX within a couple hours of each other. However, there is no word from the FAA if the agency has green-lit the company to return to flight.

Earlier this month, NASA selected SpaceX to be the builder of the vehicle that will be tasked with deorbiting the International Space Station in the 2030s. While no design was shared, it was said to be built on Dragon heritage hardware. In a new render, SpaceX shows off that it’s not just based on it, it’s basically just a long Dragon.

It’s that time of year again where the aviation world descends onto the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the annual EAA AirVenture fly-in convention. It is also our yearly reminder that the second letter of NASA stands for “Aeronautics,” as they will have a pretty serious presence this year surrounding their X-59 supersonic test plane.

On Thursday, Astra announced its deal to be taken private by its founders and long time investors, closed, effectively removing it as a publicly traded company. Its new parent company, Apogee Parent LLC, will purchase all of its outstanding stock and all stock it doesn’t own.

This week SpaceX founder and leader Elon Musk has decided to pull SpaceX’s headquarters from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas over a pro-LGBTQ+ law. However, what this actually means is unclear, as this is not the first time Musk has moved its company to Texas over political trouble.

In contrast to weeks past, we only have a single mission scheduled to launch this week, an Electron from New Zealand. Due to SpaceX’s anomaly mid-flight last week, its Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded until an investigation is completed.

Last night SpaceX launched its Starlink Group 9-3 mission from Vandenberg Space Force base, the mission ended in a failure in the Falcon 9’s second stage, leaving the payloads too low to reach orbit. This mark’s SpaceX’s first inflight failure since 2015’s CRS-7 flight.

On Tuesday Arianespace and ESA lifted off the long awaited Ariane 6 rocket from its launch site in French Guiana. Delivering several test satellites for multiple customers, the rocket proved it was capable of getting to orbit, however its second stage suffered an anomaly on a highly requested upgrade.

Today ESA is preparing to launch its first Ariane 6 rocket from French Guiana in South America. The continent has been waiting a long time for this moment after several delays to various parts of the rocket.

Following a double header by SpaceX later today, tomorrow Arianespace and the European Space Agency are ready to attempt its first launch of its Ariane 6 rocket. After years of delays and issues, the rocket has finally made it to the launch pad.

While the launch date was still set, it was getting questionable if Polaris Dawn would actually be launching on July 12. Wednesday, the program announced a new launch date of July 31.

It’s been six months into 2024 (literally how?) so it’s time to check in on how well SpaceX is doing in getting to its 148 launch goal. So far SpaceX has had one of its best years yet, but is it enough to reach that hefty goal? We’ll see.

On this quiet holiday week, China will actually be launching more than SpaceX, and even on Fourth of July (how rude). However, we do finally get to see Firefly return to the launch site after December’s partial failure of its Alpha rocket – scheduled for late Monday evening.

Bloomberg reports that SpaceX will sell its privately held shares for a new price of $112 a piece. With a new valuation of $210 billion, it now tops the charts for US unicorns and close to being number one worldwide.

Firefly announced this week that it will expand its launch sites to two new locations, including one international location. This comes as the company is hoping to get another successful launch under its belt to bolster it as a viable competitor to SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and other larger launch companies.