Space Explored

The Wall Street Journal has been able to confirm that Elon Musk has bought a ticket on Virgin Galactic. Although Musk himself hasn’t said anything.

Today we witnessed history as the first fully crewed flight of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane VSS Unity. This was one of the final test flights before Galactic begin flying paying customers next year.

This has been a busy week in spaceflight. Many of the major space companies have had notable events; from Richard Branson’s flight to space with Virgin Galactic to Relativity Space’s strongback install.

The Dragon that flew the CRS-22 mission to the International Space Station is set to return to earth over the next few days. However, Tropical Storm Elsa has proven problematic. Undocking is currently scheduled for July 7th.

Update: SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just before midnight (11:32 p.m.EDT) on Friday.

While the focus in space this week has been on Virgin Galactic, Elon still shared many notable pieces of information about SpaceX on Twitter.

The moment that Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder, has been waiting to do for decades has come. He will finally join an elite group of people to ride a vehicle into space with Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed mission.

The last few weeks have seen some fierce competition and mudslinging between private spaceflight companies. From Elon Musk’s criticisms of ULA and Blue Origin, to Blue Origin’s criticism of Virgin Galactic, there has been very little peace on Space Twitter recently. That’s why Elon Musk’s recent reply to Richard Branson was so nice to see.

It has been known for a while that Northrop Grumman will be the company tasked with building one of the most important modules on NASA’s Gateway station. It took a while, but now the company has finalized the firm, fixed-priced contract worth $935 million.

When this SpaceX’s droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, left Port Fourchon this morning, we thought it was just for sea trials. Based on the ship’s most recent movement, it seems like ASOG is already on its way to Florida.

We’ve been following the construction of SpaceX’s latest autonomous droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG), for the past few months. Early this morning, ASOG started its first sea trial just outside of Port Fourchon, and now Elon Musk shared an aerial video of the ship.

With the upcoming flight of Richard Branson on Unity22 this weekend it’s easy to say there’s probably some tension between Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. But instead of raising to the occasion and celebrating the strives of their industry, Blue Origin throws a low blow and trashes Galactic on a technicality.

Set aside some time on Sunday to catch Virgin Galactic’s very first livestream of a crewed spaceflight on the company’s SpaceShipTwo Unity spaceplane. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will be a passenger on the first fully crewed spaceflight on SS2, and special guests include host Stephen Colbert and artist Khalid.

The Earth observation company announced on Wednesday that it will merge with a special purpose acquisition company and become a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.

Space Shuttle Atlantis currently resides in an exhibit building at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, its permanent home. Back on this day in 2011, Atlantis would fly for the last time. STS-135 marked the end of the Space Shuttle Program.

Recently, an Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft believed to be carrying an Atlas V booster took off from Huntsville, Alabama on its way to Lompoc, California.

SpaceX has been building not one but two seafaring platforms on the Gulf Coast just a few hours from each other. One is SpaceX’s newest droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, and the other is the Starship sea launch platform named Phobos. Both of which have been worked on extensively over the last few months.

After its month-long trip, Of Course I Still Love You arrived at Port Long Beach earlier this morning. The trip isn’t officially over yet, the droneship will still need to be unloaded from its carrier vessel named Mighty Servant 1.

This week Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Derek Wise discuss SpaceX’s most recent launch, Starship’s new naming scheme, and the chaos that went on between the industry’s leaders.

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Relativity Space has been hard at work on Launch Complex 16 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This will be the launch site of their Terran 1 vehicle, expected to launch by the end of 2021, and their fully reusable rocket Terran R. Relativity recently installed the Strongback for Terran 1, a major milestone.

Since we last covered Ingenuity, shortly after its sixth flight, it has been hard at work exploring the Martian surface. Ingenuity has certainly proved useful to Martian exploration, making these flights look routine.

This has been a busy week for space news. We’ve had three launches, billionaires announcing their flights to space, SLS pathfinder is on the move, and Wally Funk will fly to space very soon.

Starting with Elon’s 50th birthday on Monday, he’s been extremely active on Twitter. This busy week in space news has featured a lot of back and forth between the billionaire owners of the industry.

Yesterday, SpaceX launched the Transporter-2 mission, their second dedicated rideshare mission. The Falcon 9 took flight from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and carried 88 satellites into Sun-Synchronous Orbit.