Engineers recreated the diffuser failure on the ground during the investigation, and then redesigned the part to better direct pressurized gas into the main fuel tank. This will also “substantially decrease” strain on the diffuser structure, SpaceX said. The FAA, charged with ensuring commercial rocket launches don’t endanger public safety, signed off on the investigation ..
Tag : space
Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA for a little more than a month, has vowed to make the United States great in space. With a background as a US Congressman, reality TV star, and television commentator, Duffy did not come to the position with a deep well of knowledge about spaceflight. He also already ..
The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox. Sign Me Up! Portugal green-lights Azores spaceport. The Portuguese government has granted the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium a license to build and ..
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing government agencies to “eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for commercial launch and reentry licenses. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), grants licenses for commercial launch and reentry operations. The FAA is charged with ensuring launch and reentries comply with environmental ..
United Launch Alliance delivered multiple US military satellites into a high-altitude orbit after a prime-time launch Tuesday night, marking an important transition from development to operations for the company’s new Vulcan rocket. This mission, officially designated USSF-106 by the US Space Force, was the first flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket to carry national security payloads. ..
The Vulcan rocket checks off several important boxes for the Space Force. First, it relies entirely on US-made rocket engines. The Atlas V rocket it is replacing uses Russian-built main engines, and given the chilled relations between the two powers, US officials have long desired to stop using Russian engines to power the Pentagon’s satellites ..
Early Monday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from its original launch site in Florida. Remarkably, it was SpaceX’s 100th launch of the year. Perhaps even more notable was the rocket’s payload: two-dozen Project Kuiper satellites, which were dispensed into low-Earth orbit on target. This was SpaceX’s second launch of satellites for Amazon, which ..
After the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell was named the deputy director of science and applications at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (today, Johnson Space Center) before retiring from both the space agency and Navy on March 1, 1973. Lovell became chief executive officer of Bay-Houston Towing Company in 1975 and then president of Fisk Telephone Systems ..
SpaceX begins offering Starship services to Mars. On Thursday, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, announced that the company has begun selling rides to Mars. “Get on board! We are going to Mars! SpaceX is now offering Starship services to the red planet,” Shotwell said on X. As part of the announcement, ..
“We wanted to have a fuel system that was green instead of using hypergolics, so we could land it on a runway and we could walk up to the vehicle without being in hazmat suits,” Tom Vice, then Sierra’s chief executive, told Ars in late 2023. “That was hard, I have to say.” Apparently it ..
