Space Explored

Late last week, Rocket Lab launched its 20th Electron mission and their second Electron to be recovered. While the mission failed during the second stage burn, the first stage’s secondary mission seems successful.

SpaceX is planning to launch their third operational mission for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program later this year and NASA has added the fourth and final seat to the flight.

May 16th, 8:44 PM: The Black Brant XII sounding rocket carrying the KiNET-X mission launched from Wallops Island in Virginia, images below.

NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility is set to launch a sounding rocket on May 8th late in the evening that could be easily seen across the east side of the US if weather conditions allow.

May 15th, 7:35 PM EDT: SpaceX successfully launched and deployed all payloads on the Starlink V.10 L26 mission.

Earlier this week we saw the first 10th flown booster take off from Cape Canaveral, finally hitting the milestone Elon Musk set out. This week another high flight number booster will take off with more Starlink Satellites.

Date: Saturday, May 15th, 6:58 PM EDT

Perseverance, Ingenuity, and all the other American bots on Mars now have company. China became the second-ever country to successfully land a rover on the red planet today. Zhurong, named for the god of fire in Chinese folk tales, is roughly the size of NASA’s 2004 Spirit and Opportunity robots.

It’s a tough day for the folks at Rocket Lab. After a successful liftoff from New Zealand, the California rocket company experienced another failure of its Electron second stage. This sadly means that the payload, two BlackSky satellites, were lost during the mission.

We’ve been deep diving through Perseverance and Ingenuity since before the Mars 2020 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral last year. Still, seeing NASA’s Mars rover and first-ever helicopter and their first month spent on the red planet still wows us.

Last week, we saw SpaceX launch their 5th Starship prototype rocket. This time, instead of exploding on or above the pad, it stuck the landing.

For each launch, SpaceX must obtain permission from the FCC to use certain radio frequencies. In those filings, we can find details about the launch. Then tend to be the same for each Falcon 9 launch, but for Starship, we get to have a peek into the plans for the orbital launch attempt.

In cases where there is an emergency on the pad and the crew needs to get out of there in a hurry. Companies have designed Emergency Egress Systems (EES) to do just that job. SpaceX and ULA each have them, and in the past, NASA has as well. It looks like Artemis, NASA’s mission to the moon, is in the early stages of having her’s built.

Today Facer is releasing brand new watch faces for the Apple Watch that will let you show off your space passion everywhere you go.

It was announced today that Steve Jurczyk will retire after a long service to NASA, serving many roles the most recent being NASA’s Associate Administrator.

Almost a decade in the making, SpaceX has finally launched and then landed their first 10th flown Falcon 9 rocket booster, a booster that has been flying for over 2 years.

Dogecoin has gone from a joke crypto coin to the hottest cryptocurrency since bitcoin, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is largely responsible for its meteoric rise over the last few months. Now the space exploration company is planning the first dogecoin-funded mission to the Moon …

Earlier today it was confirmed that the barge designated Marmac 302 was being worked on in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The barge looks to be getting modifications for Falcon 9 landings.

As soon as this weekend, SpaceX will attempt to launch one of its life-leading Falcon 9 boosters for the 10th time. This will make complete a promise Elon Musk has said for years that he will reuse a Falcon 9 ten times.

Date: Sunday, May 9th, 2:42 AM EDT

This week’s Saturday Night Live was hosted by none other than SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. This lead to many references to all of Musk’s companies, one of the highlights of the night though was a skit showing off SpaceX’s future base on Mars.

This week join Space Explored’s Seth Kurkowski and Zac Hall to discuss SpaceX’s Starship SN15 landing, Crew-1’s return to Earth, Coldplay playing music in space, and more new. This followed by a spoiler-filled review of For All Mankind season 2.

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