Blue Moon lunar lander concept of operations. Credit: NASA Blue Moon lunar lander concept of operations. Credit: NASA The chart shared by NASA showed Orion docking with the Blue Moon lander in an elliptical lunar orbit, approximately 8,500 km above the Moon’s surface. However NASA is also working to have the option of docking with ..
Tag : space
Public, private, or both? But there’s no firm plan yet for when the military might get moving on actually setting up a new launch base. “It’s going to take a strong partnership with local and state governments,” Garrant said. “As far as decision timelines, we don’t have anything yet.” There were 175 orbital launch attempts ..
Welcome to Edition 9.16 of the Rocket Report! Lots of SpaceX-related news this week including a couple of Thursday shockers. In one story, the company told the US Space Force thanks, but no thanks after being offered three military launch contracts. Then, on the civil space side of things, SpaceX’s Starship may required up to ..
NASA does not have, nor want, nuclear weapons. But when it comes to a particular metric that is part of the Artemis Program to land people on the Moon, NASA guards a particular number like they are trying to prevent outsiders from cracking nuclear codes. I am speaking of the number of Starship launches required ..
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he would like to see the consolidation of his business empire by formally merging his two largest companies, SpaceX and Tesla. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” Musk said of a potential merger. He was speaking during a question-and-answer period as part of SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings ..
Welcome to Edition 9.15 of the Rocket Report! The launch I’m most looking forward to in the next few weeks is that of Japan’s Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission. MMX is one of the marquee space science missions launching this year, and it’s set to leave Earth as soon as Monday (US time) aboard a ..
Blue Origin announced a major expansion of its already considerable Florida launch facilities on Friday morning with the intent of eventually flying more than 100 rockets a year from there. The company said it would add two launch pads for the New Glenn rocket, in addition to two already under construction at Cape Canaveral. The ..
Rocket Lab announced Wednesday that its Neutron launch vehicle won’t fly until 2027, citing an issue discovered during manufacturing of the rocket’s carbon composite structures. The announcement was public confirmation of what nearly everyone inside Rocket Lab and the wider space industry already knew. The most recent official update from Rocket Lab in August suggested ..
This will be the rocket’s first flight from European soil … The flight from SaxaVord will be HyImpulse’s second SR75 mission and its first to carry commercial payloads. The company completed an initial test flight of the suborbital rocket on May 3, 2024, from the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. Keep up with the ..
“My fundamental ask here is that we need to make headway here and begin sharing data across all vehicles, from whatever country you are, with us and with others, to promote a safe operating environment,” Nicolls said. Nearly all Chinese satellite operators decline to publicly share their satellite ephemeris data. Credit: SpaceX Nearly all Chinese ..
