Space Explored

It was a relatively quiet countdown last night, with SpaceX showing that they know what they’re doing and hitting all the milestones early during Crew-6’s launch preparations. Unfortunately, however, no good deed goes unpunished because the company ran into an issue when loading a rather nasty part of the propellant for Falcon 9’s launch.

United Launch Alliance is targeting May 4 for the inaugural launch of its highly-anticipated Vulcan Centaur rocket.

The company has a planned window of four days to execute the launch once additional testing of the rocket and its main engines are satisfactory.

These final tests will occur at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. According to CEO Tory Bruno, the mega rocket will roll to the launch pad “a few days from now” for a wet dress rehearsal, as well as additional tanking tests.

According to a public YouTube stream (and now a tweet from the company), Relativity will launch its first Terran 1 rocket in the coming weeks out of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard any news around Phobos and Deimos, SpaceX’s retired oil rigs being converted into sea platforms for Starship. It turns out that’s because SpaceX quietly abandoned plans to turn either of its rigs into launchpads at sea.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers believe to have found a galaxy that was a near identical image to the Milky Way 13 billion years ago. What it can tell us about our own galaxy could be groundbreaking.

After years of trying, Blue Origin has finally been able to secure a launch task order through NASA for its New Glenn rocket, and it’s going to Mars!

After over three years of development in South Texas, SpaceX finally reached its final milestone before launching a complete Starship rocket to orbit, the 33-engine static fire. While only 31 Raptor engines successfully ignited, this is still a major milestone for the company as it hopes to start flying this rocket to finally gain an ROI on its investment.

C/2022 E3 or more notably known as the “rare green comet,” has swept the Internet in the past weeks, with many people wondering how they can spot it. Here’s everything you need to know about the once in a 50,000-year event.

NASA’s newest discovery might just be the most adorable yet. Last month, the space agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured what can only be the face of a bear carved into the red planet’s ancient landscape.

Remember in 2021 when we were so excited that both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic would come online and show a glimpse of a potential space tourism boom? Yet here we are with some exciting news, but neither company is currently capable of launching, and we don’t know when they will return fully. Sigh.

Nigeria just became the first African country to gain SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet. The internet service relies on a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that connect with user terminals and stations on the ground to provide low latency and high speed internet.

After about a three-year delay due to multiple reasons, Rocket Lab can now be added to the list of companies that launch out of the US. Yesterday the company lifted off from LC-2, its second launch complex out of Wallops Island, Virginia, a pad it started construction on in 2019.

Wow, it’s been a minute since I remember writing about a major Starship testing milestone out of SpaceX’s Starbase facility. But here we are to throw some more fuel to the excitement over Starship’s first launch attempt, now having a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) under its belt.

Rocket Lab’s Electron launch program is finally starting to take off, with a chance to surpass double-digit launches this year. However, the development of the company’s next launcher, Neutron, is in full swing, with facilities built and hardware being produced.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet has continued to expand, and new partnerships will be using the service to provide internet to even more of the general public outside of the home. These latest partnerships, with Carnival Corporation and Thor Industries, will bring Starlink service aboard Carnival Cruise line and Aida Cruise ships, and also integrate the technology into newly built RVs.

A recently discovered comet will be Earth’s newest visitor in the coming weeks as it makes its first appearance in the night sky in 50,000 years.

Sunday afternoon, this time without any fog, SpaceX launched USSF-67, another Falcon Heavy rocket out of LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. Starting a year that could bring us four more super heavy lift launches from the company.

2022 was another record-breaking year for SpaceX, launching 60 Falcon 9s and one Falcon Heavy, the first since 2019. That’s an average of over one launch per week and double what SpaceX could do in 2021.

SpaceX’s Starlink high-speed satellite internet service is currently down for thousands of users as the company prepares for another Starlink launch from California tonight. The exact cause of the outage is unclear, but users globally are without internet.

That’s right, John Deere, what once was just a tractor company, is now looking at getting into the satellite business by finding a partner to supply geospatial maps to its farmers.

I feel it was just a few days ago we were talking about SpaceX wrapping up 2022 and hitting its 60th launch. With the holiday weekend over, SpaceX is right back at it launching its Falcon 9 rocket.