RUSSIA’S PROGRESS MS-23 RESUPPLY MISSION ARRIVES AT SPACE STATION - Roscosmos launched its Progress MS-23 spacecraft to the International Space Station on Wednesday. Liftoff, atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, occurred 12:56 UTC (6:56 p.m. local time), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It docked without issue a few hours later. Progress MS-23 is the latest in a long series of uncrewed Progress cargo spacecraft which Russia uses to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). It is the 23rd flight of the Progress MS vehicle and is also designated Progress 84P by NASA – which signifies that it is the 84th Progress cargo delivery mission to the ISS. This number includes missions flown by earlier versions of the Progress vehicle.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - May 27)

SOUTH KOREA SAYS HOMEGROWN SPACE ROCKET PUT SATELLITES INTO ORBIT - South Korea's domestically made space rocket delivered a commercial grade satellite into orbit for the first time on Thursday, the country's science minister said, a breakthrough in its ambitions to compete in a space race with its Asian neighbours. The Nuri rocket lifted off from Naro Space Center on the southern coast of South Korea at 6:24 p.m. (0924 GMT) in its third flight after technical glitches caused the launch to be cancelled a day earlier.   More
(Source: Reuters - May 26)

ROCKET LAB LAUNCHES 2 TINY NASA HURRICANE-WATCHING PROBES TO ORBIT - The second set of NASA's TROPICS cubesats launched on Thursday night (May 25), completing the agency's hurricane-studying miniconstellation. The two tiny satellites lifted off atop a Rocket Lab Electron vehicle from the company's Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand's North Island on Thursday at 11:46 p.m. EDT (0346 GMT on May 26). The Electron deployed the cubesat pair as planned about 34 minutes after liftoff, Rocket Lab confirmed via Twitter.   More
(Source: Space.com - May 26)

RUSSIAN SUPPLY SHIP LAUNCHES TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Russia’s Progress MS-23 cargo freighter launched Wednesday from Kazakhstan on a mission hauling more than 2.7 tons of fuel, food, experiments, and supplies to the International Space Station. The Progress MS-23 supply ship lifted off at 8:56:07 a.m. EDT (1256:07 UTC) from the Site 31 launch complex at Baikonur, located in a remote part of Kazakhstan east of the Aral Sea. Russian ground teams at Baikonur rolled the Progress MS-23 spacecraft and its Soyuz rocket to the launch pad Sunday, then raised the launcher vertical for final mission preparations.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 25)

VIRGIN ORBIT TO CEASE OPERATIONS, SELL ASSETS OF RICHARD BRANSON'S SATELLITE LAUNCHER - Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit is shutting down less than two months after the satellite launch start-up filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to a Tuesday company announcement. Virgin Orbit will cease operations and sell its assets to four winning bidders, the company announced Tuesday. Those bidders include three aerospace companies — Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch and Vast Space subsidiary Launcher — with combined bids totaling almost $36 million, according to court documents.   More
(Source: ABC News - May 25)

ARABSAT 7B TO BE SLC-40’S QUICKEST TURNAROUND - SpaceX is set to launch the Arabsat 7B satellite to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) for Arabsat atop its Falcon 9 rocket. The launch is currently scheduled for May 23 at 11:25 PM EDT (03:25 UTC on May 24) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This launch will mark the quickest turnaround time of SLC-40 ever at four days, 21 hours, and five minutes.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - May 24)

ORBITAL SIDEKICK ACQUIRES FIRST LIGHT IMAGERY - Hyperspectral startup Orbital Sidekick is acquiring imagery from its first two satellites launched in April on the SpaceX Transporter-7 rideshare flight. “We recently acquired first light, which was very exciting,” Katie Corcoran, OSK vice president of government affairs, said May 22 at the GEOINT Symposium here. “We have two healthy payloads on orbit right now.”   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 24)

THE SPACEPORT COMPANY DEMONSTRATES OFFSHORE LAUNCH OPERATIONS - Two companies have demonstrated the ability to conduct launches from a floating platform in U.S. territorial waters, a concept that could help address congestion at terrestrial launch sites. The Spaceport Company announced May 23 it hosted four sounding rocket launches by Evolution Space on May 22 from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The launches were part of a proof-of-concept test of the ability to conduct launches from an offshore platform.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 24)

AXIOM’S SECOND PRIVATE ASTRONAUT MISSION DOCKS AT INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Four commercial space fliers who launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Axiom’s second private astronaut mission Sunday arrived at the International Space Station on a SpaceX crew capsule Monday to start an eight-day stay full of scientific experiments, student outreach events, and sightseeing. Docking of SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft at the space station’s Harmony module occurred at 9:12 a.m. EDT (1312 UTC), completing an automated rendezvous that saw the capsule match orbits with the complex with a sequence of thruster firings after launching Sunday from Florida’s Space Coast.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 23)

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