Space Explored

Announced on February 22, Hayley Arceneaux is releasing a book on her story, from battling cancer at St. Jude to representing hope as a crew member of Jared Issacman’s Inspiration4 mission to space.

Northrop Grumman announced on February 21 that its subsidiary, SpaceLogistics, received the company’s first purchase of the Mission Extension Pod by Australian satellite operator Optus.

On Saturday, February 19, Northrop Grumman launched an Antares 230+ rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The rocket carried a Cygnus spacecraft, S.S. Piers Sellers, which has since joined up with the International Space Station.

If you haven’t been to SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, it is truly a mesmerizing place. Very few places have rockets this size on display, and it looks like SpaceX will share this love with the community.

How on Earth (err.. Mars?) has it been a full year since NASA’s latest Mars rover landed on the surface of Mars!

The rover launched back on July 30, 2020 on an Atlas V 541 rocket and traveled for over 200 days before landing on the surface of the Red Planet.

Just over a week ago we got our very first look at images the James Webb Space Telescope was taking. The images are still far from the quality of scienfic images expected a few months from now, but now the previously messy array of light points has been organized and aligned according to mirror segment location.

Firefly Aerospace has released an update video after a prolonged period of silence. Both the first and second stages for their Flight 2 vehicle have passed acceptance testing. There is no launch date currently.

In a Tweet last year, Elon Musk confirmed that Starlink laser-based communication was coming to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Now we know the Polaris Dawn mission will be the first crew to test out and make use of this additional connectivity option. And as Starlink continues to expand, with plans for Gen2 Starlink satellites launched on Starship being essential for the company, NASA has expressed some concerns about the expanding constellation.

Firefly has been a promising startup with a (failed) launch under its belt and hard at work on its Alpha launch vehicle. The time at the company recently has been rather dramatic, as the US Government has been attempting to oust one of the company’s founders, Max Polyakov, citing national security concerns with his Ukrainian origins.

On February 10, SpaceX‘s Chief Engineer Elon Musk gave us an update on the company’s Starship launch vehicle. While it was light on brand new details, we still got some news. Below are our key takeaways from the event.

Today, a great deal of news about the future tourism flights of SpaceX came to light, led by none other than Billionaire Jared Isaacman. After commanding Inspiration4 last year, Isaacman will return as commander of a daring first of its kind Dragon mission, flying higher and staying longer than Inspiration4 did.

News sites around the world, including us, reported on a Falcon 9 upper stage that was on a collision course with the Moon, with an impact expected on March 4. Except… new evidence (or rather, reobserving old evidence) points to the fact that this rocket stage is not actually the Falcon 9 upper stage from the DSCOVR mission, but instead a rocket stage from the Long March 3C that launched China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission.

On December 25, 2021, James Webb Space Telescope was launched from the French Guiana towards Lagrange point 2. People have been anxiously awaiting the return of the first image from the next-generation space scope, but now that wait is finally over!

The time has finally come, Elon Musk is about to take to the stage to update the world on SpaceX’s Starship progress. While many of the big events were widely reported when they happened, we expect to get more information about how development has gone, internal progress, and the future of the development.

We’re at a point in history where we’re seeing the booming world of retail trading meeting the new territory of publicly-traded rocket launch providers. This week, Astra has shown that things aren’t always bright and rosy when these two worlds meet.

Today Astra launched its Rocket 3.3 vehicle from Florida. This was the company’s first launch from the Space Coast, with all previous launches taking place out of Alaska. While the rocket successfully lifted off, the rocket failed to deliver its payloads to orbit, an issue with the fairing is possibly to blame.

Tonight Elon Musk will update us on the current progress of SpaceX’s Starship development. The last time this happened was in 2019, just after the first Starhopper flight.

Late Wednesday night SpaceX raised Starship 20 on top of Super Heavy booster 4 for the second time. This time the company used the new lifting/catching mechanism installed on Starship’s launch tower.

SpaceX is often lauded for having its whole operation in South Texas on display. Despite this, there are regular calls for a proper “Starship update” presentation. The last “Starship update” was in 2019, and to say the program has progressed a lot since then would be a gross understatement. Let’s take a look at the program’s development since 2019.