Update: Crew-11 Makes Safe Return to Earth
NASA’s Crew-11 mission splashed down safely off the coast of California at 3:41 AM Eastern time early Thursday morning, one
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Last Week In Spaceflight
Sugars Essential to Life Discovered on Bennu
On December 2nd, 2025, a team led by researchers at Tohoku University in Japan announced the identification of Ribose, Glucose, and other sugars in a sample of the asteroid Bennu returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023.
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HTV-X Arrives at ISS For the First Time
After its launch from the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center on October 26th at 9:00 AM JST, Japan’s HTV-X1 resupply mission arrived at the ISS, where it was berthed at roughly 1:00 AM JST on October 30th.
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Starship 36 Explodes During Static Fire Testing
At 11:01 PM Central Time the night of June 18th, Starship 36 exploded on its test stand prior to a planned static fire test. Ship 36 was planned to be used for Flight 10, so its loss throws the immediate future of the Starship program into question.
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Familiar Spectacle and Setbacks From Starship Flight 8
SpaceX launched Starship’s eighth integrated test flight on Thursday, March 6th, producing a remarkably similar showing to its seventh flight. Exactly seven weeks after that test was cut short by an upper stage failure, the system encountered another anomaly.
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Blue Fire and Green Lights for New Glenn
The first integrated New Glenn launch vehicle has completed a hotfire test of its seven BE-4 main engines. The hot fire test was New Glenn’s final major pre-launch test campaign ahead of its debut mission – slated for very early 2025.
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New Glenn on the Roll
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has made it to Launch Complex 36 ahead of the massive rocket’s inaugural flight, scheduled for sometime this year.
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Starship IFT-5 Launches With a Catch
At 7:25 AM CDT on October 13th, 2024, the fifth Integrated Flight Test (IFT-5) of SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy launch vehicle lifted itself from its Orbital Launch Mount at Starbase, Texas.
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FAA Waives Hera Launch – Falcon 9 Remains Grounded
Falcon 9 currently finds itself in the midst of its third grounding in 2024. Following a successful launch of the Crew-9 mission and crew aboard Crew Dragon Freedom on September 28th, the Falcon 9 second stage experienced an anomaly during its deorbit burn, causing it to fall outside of the designated safe zone.
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Crew-9 Launches Two Astronauts to ISS
SpaceX’s ninth crew rotation to the International Space Station is underway, carrying two crew members uphill to the orbiting laboratory. Crew-9 evaded stormy weather to lift off on September 28th, 2024 at 1:17 PM EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
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Polaris Program Aims High with First Commercial Spacewalk
On September 10, 2024, one of the farthest-reaching civilian missions in human history lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aiming to smash records and push boundaries in support of human spaceflight objectives. The Polaris Dawn mission, launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9, also completed the first commercial spacewalk, with Commander Jared Isaacman and Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis exiting the spacecraft for an extravehicular activity (EVA) lasting just under two hours.
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Falcon 9 Completes Second Return to Flight of 2024
SpaceX’s Starlink 8-10 mission lifted off successfully at 3:43 AM EDT on the morning of August 31st, deploying 21 Starlink satellites into orbit. This mission represents the second return to flight for Falcon 9 this year, and a historic turnaround.
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Pressure Mounts as New Glenn Nears Launch Date
2024 is far from over and another new rocket is still expected to earn its wings: Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
If all proceeds according to plan it could happen in less than 60 days. However, substantial milestones remain incomplete, raising questions on the rocket’s readiness.
Delta IV Heavy Nails Final Flight
On April 9th, 2024 at 12:53 PM EST- the final rocket of the Delta family lifted off from SLC-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, ending a career and lineage with roots as far back as the dawn of the space program.
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H3 Returns to Flight, Achieves Milestones
Following a failure with the second stage engine in March 2023 during its maiden flight, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully launched its second H3 rocket on January 16th, 2024.
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Ingenuity’s Mission Comes to an End
On January 25, 2024, NASA’s Ingenuity mission officially concluded. The small, autonomous helicopter performed 72 flights on Mars, the first time an aircraft has flown on another planet.
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Re-Entry Seals Peregrine’s Fate
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on January 18th, 2024, ending its mission after a 10 day, tumultuous journey through cislunar space.
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Japan Becomes Fifth Nation to Land on the Moon
On January 19th 2024, JAXA’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) successfully touched down on the surface of the Moon. This makes Japan the fifth nation in history to conduct a successful soft landing on the surface of the Moon, following Russia, the United States, China, and India.
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SpaceX Launches USSF-52 and Starlink 6-36 in Record Time
After considerable delay, USSF-52/OTV-7 has gotten underway, lifting off at 8:07 PM on Thursday, December 28th atop a Falcon Heavy.
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VP Harris Lays Out Cooperative Policy Roadmap
At the National Space Council meeting on December 20, 2023, Vice President Kamala Harris and her advisors announced that the Artemis Program will land an international astronaut on the moon “before the end of the decade.”
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ISRO to Perform Lunar Sample Return
In a lecture given on November 17, Shri Nilesh M. Desai, director of India’s Space Application Center, outlined India’s next missions to the Moon – including the ambitious and tantalizing official plan for Chandrayaan-4.
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Project Kuiper and Beyond: An Internet Satellite Overview
On the 6th of October, 2023, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifted off from SLC-41 carrying Amazon’s first two prototype Kuiper internet satellites. This marks the beginning of a new internet age…
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