SPACEX'S STARSHIP SPLASHES DOWN IN PACIFIC OCEAN AFTER RETURNING TO EARTH EARLIER THAN PLANNED - A thunderous lift off, rapid satellite deployments and a fiery ending. That's how SpaceX's 14th launch of its Starship rocket panned out today. SpaceX - owned by Elon Musk - describes Starship as "the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed". SpaceX aims for it to be reusable and eventually take people to the Moon. It's made up of two parts, the booster, and the top section called the Ship. Minutes after today's launch from the base in Texas, the booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico as planned. More (Source: BBC News - Sep 29)
MILLIONS OF SATELLITES ORBITING EARTH? ASTRONOMERS HOPE THE UN CAN SLOW THE COMING DATA CENTER DOOM - The International Court of Justice (ICJ) could help stop the uncontrolled proliferation of satellites in Earth orbit, which threatens to erase stars from the sky, astronomers hope. The initiative, spearheaded by the nonprofit Outer Space Institute, aims to lobby the United Nations to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ, the UN's principal judicial body. Through this, scientists want to gain clarity over the legal responsibilities of launching states to preserve near-Earth space from orbital clutter and the dark night sky from excessive light pollution. More (Source: Space.com - Sep 29)
SPACEX LAUNCHES STARSHIP INTO ORBIT FOR 1ST TIME — LARGEST ROCKET EVER BUILT NOTCHES KEY MILESTONE ON DRAMATIC FLIGHT 14 TEST - Starship has just gone where it has never gone before. SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy megarocket — the biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built — reached orbit today (Sept. 28), notching a huge milestone on the road to operational flight. And the launch, from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, was not without high drama. During liftoff, one of the six engines on the Starship upper stage went out, raising doubt on whether SpaceX would attempt to reach orbit after all. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot even announced it was called off, only to reverse course as flight controllers decided to press ahead. More (Source: Space.com - Sep 28)
NEXT CREW BOUND FOR THE SPACE STATION ARRIVE IN FLORIDA - The next quartet heading to the International Space Station arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon. They are scheduled to launch no earlier than 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 UTC) on Thursday, Oct. 1. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk and NASA astronaut Luke Delany piloted a pair of T-38 jets from NASA’s Johnson Space Center and landed at the Launch and Landing Facility under a largely cloud-less sky and with a light breeze. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 28)
NASA ANNOUNCES NEW SPACE TELESCOPE ‘PRIMA’ TO LAUNCH IN 2033 - On the heels of launching its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA announced a new observatory, the Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics or PRIMA. The agency said Wednesday PRIMA was moving into what’s referred to as Phase B development. That allows for further development of the preliminary design and for NASA to conduct technical and budget reviews. If approved, PRIMA will move forward into Phase C with a max project cost of $1.2 billion, not including launch and other costs. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 27)
'OWLRIGHT, OWLRIGHT, OWLRIGHT': ROCKET LAB LAUNCHES PRIVATE JAPANESE RADAR SATELLITE TO ORBIT - Rocket Lab launched another Earth-imaging radar satellite to orbit for the Japanese company Synspective on Friday night (Sept. 25). The mission, called “Owlright, Owlright, Owlright,” lifted off aboard an Electron rocket from Pad B at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on Friday at 8:39 p.m. EDT (0039 GMT on Sept. 26). Everything went well: The satellite was deployed into low Earth orbit (LEO) as planned, Rocket Lab announced via X. More (Source: Space.com - Sep 27)
SPACEX FALCON 9 LAUNCHES CLASSIFIED MISSION FOR U.S. SPACE FORCE FROM WEST COAST - A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off at dawn on Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a mission to continue deployment of a secretive U.S. military satellite constellation. Liftoff of the USSF-385 mission lifted off in dense fog at 7:00:54 a.m. PDT (10:00:54 a.m. EDT / 1400:54 UTC). The rocket took a southerly trajectory on departure from the pad at Space Launch Complex 4-East. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 27)
SPACEX LAUNCHING PROTOTYPE GOOGLE AI SATELLITE NEXT WEEK - The age of the orbital data center may be about to dawn. Google announced today (Sept. 24) that a prototype satellite for its planned Project Suncatcher AI constellation will fly on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which is currently scheduled to launch on Oct. 1. The main goal is to see how core Suncatcher hardware — Google chips known as tensor processing units (TPUs) — perform in the final frontier, according to the company. More (Source: Space.com - Sep 26)
NASA SHARES SPACEX CREW-14 ASSIGNMENTS FOR SPACE STATION MISSION - Four crew members from three space agencies will launch to the International Space Station no earlier than spring 2027 for a long-duration science expedition as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-14 mission. NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Chris Birch will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Makoto Suwa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan as mission specialists. After docking, Crew-14 will join the space station’s Expedition 75/76. More (Source: NASA - Sep 26)
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