NASA TO LAUNCH WEATHER OBSERVING SATELLITE IN JUNE - Next month, NASA will launch NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellite to help improve weather observing and environmental monitoring capabilities on Earth, as well as advance space weather observations. NASA said that the GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from its Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 25.   More
(Source: RTTNews - May 14)

SPACEX LAUNCHES 23 STARLINK SATELLITES FROM FLORIDA - SpaceX launched 23 more of its Starlink satellites on Sunday (May 12), adding to its huge and ever-growing broadband megaconstellation. A Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 8:53 p.m. EDT (0053 GMT on May 13). The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8 minutes after launch, touching down on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 13)

CHINA LAUNCHES NEW SATELLITE INTO SPACE - China on Sunday launched a Long March-4C rocket, placing a satellite in space. The rocket blasted off at 7:43 a.m. (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China and sent the satellite Shiyan-23 into preset orbit. The satellite will mainly be used for space environment monitoring. It was the 522nd flight mission of the Long March series rockets.   More
(Source: - May 13)

NASA POWER OUTAGE TEMPORARILY HALTS CONTACT WITH SPACE STATION - A NASA power outage disrupted communication between Mission Control and the International Space Station on Tuesday. Mission Control couldn’t send commands to the station and talk with the seven astronauts in orbit. The power outage hit as upgrade work was underway in the building at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Space station program manager Joel Montelbano said neither the astronauts nor station were ever in any danger and that backup control systems took over within 90 minutes. The crew was notified of the problem through Russian communication systems, within 20 minutes of the outage.   More
(Source: MSN - May 13)

MUSK'S STARLINK SATELLITES DISRUPTED BY MAJOR SOLAR STORM - Starlink, the satellite arm of Elon Musk's SpaceX, warned on Saturday of a "degraded service" as the Earth is battered by the biggest geomagnetic storm due to solar activity in two decades. Starlink owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting Earth and is a dominant player in satellite internet. Musk said earlier in a post on X that Starlink satellites were under a lot of pressure due to the geomagnetic storm, but were holding up so far.   More
(Source: Reuters - May 12)

SPACEX FLIES 13 MORE DIRECT TO CELL STARLINK SATELLITES ON FALCON 9 ROCKET LAUNCH FROM VANDENBERG SFB - After a 24 hour mission delay, SpaceX was able to launch the Starlink 8-2 mission from the company’s West Coast launch pad. The launch followed a successful launch from Florida’s Space Coast earlier Wednesday. In total, there were 20 Starlink satellites onboard the launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) Thursday night. Liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base happened at 9:30 p.m. PDT (12:30 a.m. EDT, 0430 UTC). The launch time was pushed back multiple times Wednesday and SpaceX did not give a reason for delaying a day.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 10)

CHINA LAUNCHES ITS FIRST MEDIUM EARTH ORBIT BROADBAND SATELLITES - China launched the first satellites for a medium Earth orbit broadband constellation late Wednesday. A Long March 3B lifted off at 9:43 p.m. Eastern May 8 (0143 UTC May 9) from the inland Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed launch success, revealing the mission payloads for the first time to be the Smart Skynet-1 (01) satellites A and B.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 10)

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT: HOW BAD ARE SATELLITE MEGACONSTELLATIONS FOR ASTRONOMY? - Over the past few years, our planet has become increasingly encircled by Starlink, OneWeb and other "megaconstellation" satellites. Yes, the emergence of those megaconstellations offers great benefits for humanity. But in a wait-a-minute pause, there are also substantial costs, including a growing imposition on astronomy. That's the view of David Koplow, the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 10)

SPACEX BREAKS SPACE SHUTTLE PAD RECORD WITH FALCON 9 STARLINK MISSION - With a Wednesday afternoon launch, SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets exceeded the total number of Space Shuttle missions from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The combination of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket launches passed the total number of shuttle flights seen at that pad.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 8)

Previous Next