Space Explored

In a full week of news, NASA is looking at LC-49 for Starship launches, Parker Solar Probe touched the Sun, and more claims of sexual harassment surfaced in the industry. Catch up on last week’s news this Monday below.

Early Saturday morning, we watched SpaceX launch its most flown booster out of Vandenberg Space Force Base with 52 Starlink satellites. This evening we watched SpaceX launch just one communication satellite to geostationary transfer orbit out of Florida.

‘Oumuamua is on its way out of the solar system but that hasn’t stopped researchers from learning what they can. Some individuals are trying to see if they can make contact with it before it leaves our neighborhood.

This morning, SpaceX launched its Starlink Group 4-4 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This was the first time SpaceX launched a booster for the eleventh time, further proving the reliability of its Falcon 9 first stage.

NASA has selected Dragon’s commander and pilot for SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission. The International Space Station rotation mission is expected to take place in the Spring of 2023.

SpaceX has reached out to NASA to conduct an environmental assessment for Starship Super Heavy launches out of Launch Complex 49 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX has long utilized drones to capture the progress of its programs. From Grasshopper to Starship, we take a look through SpaceX’s history, as seen by its drones.

Launched on a Delta IV Heavy rocket back in 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now touched the Sun, flying through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona.

The continued troubles of Boeing’s second Orbital Flight Test keep coming as the company has confirmed it will replace the service module on the OFT-2 Starliner, also stating the next available launch window is in May.

Ashley Kosak, a former SpaceX mission integration engineer and now a program manager at Apple, described in a letter the repeated and widespread harassment taking place throughout Elon Musk’s space company.

The Consumer Electronics Show is coming up in January, and while most of the company’s there will be for consumer products, some space industry companies will showcase their projects. One of those companies is Sierra Space.

A new year means a new theme for Kennedy Space Center’s most prominent building. So we say goodbye to the “Launch America” campaign this year and hello to the Artemis Program.

This year’s TIME “Person of the Year” title goes to the man who led the space industry to a new era of affordability and reusability, built an electric vehicle empire, and tweets about pooping in his spare time. Of course, we are talking about Elon Musk.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos plans to send Cosmonaut Anna Kikina to space on a SpaceX Dragon Capsule next September.

On Saturday morning, the crew of Blue Origin’s NS-19 launched just past the boundary of space. This time the New Shepard capsule was full.

Watch Alan Shepard’s eldest daughter Laura Shepard Churchley and Good Morning American co-anchor Michael Strahan launch to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

This has been a big year for Space Tourism, from the sub-orbital hops of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to the multi-day orbital journey of the Inspiration4 crew. This raised a number of questions about what it means to be an astronaut. Many claimed that these space-tourists are nothing but passengers, and calling them astronauts dilutes the title provided to space heroes like Neil Armstrong, while others said that reaching space should be enough for the title. The FAA has now put this question to bed, issuing this year’s space tourists FAA Commercial Astronaut wings, but shutting down the program moving forward.

In partnership with G4TV, the former Mythbuster Adam Savage set out to design and build his own xEMU-inspired spacesuit. The process was documented on his YouTube Channel, Tested.

It’s crazy to think it’s already been one year since SpaceX‘s first high-altitude Starship flight, but here we are. Starship SN8 might not have landed in one piece, but the baby step led to SN15’s landing several months later.

Starting Wednesday morning, we saw three launches from three different continents within 24 hours. It all started in Russia with a launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket.