Tag: spaceflight
SpaceX scales back plans for Starship’s first high-altitude flight
You might want to dial back your expectations for the first high-altitude SpaceX Starship flight. Elon Musk now says the flight with the SN8 prototype will top out at 15km, or close to 50,000ft, instead of the 18km and 60,000ft he’d mentioned earlier… Source
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SpaceX’s next Starship prototype will try a 60,000-foot return flight
SpaceX is nearly done with short-hop Starship test flights. Elon Musk has shared (via TechCrunch) that the company’s SN8 Starship prototype should be finished in “about a week,” and will conduct Starship’s first high-altitude flight. After static fir… Source
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Space startup Astra’s first orbital rocket launch ends prematurely
The relatively small private rocket industry just got a little larger, if not quite in the way its new entrant hoped. The American startup Astra conducted a brief first orbital launch attempt (via TechCrunch) late on September 11th, with a successful… Source
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Virgin Galactic’s last round of SpaceShipTwo tests begins October 22nd
Virgin Galactic is finally getting close to that moment when it can put tourists (or at least, its founder) into space. CNBC has learned through an FCC filing that Virgin Galactic will conduct the first of its last two crewed SpaceShipTwo tests on Oc… Source
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China says it landed a reusable spacecraft after a two-day flight
China might have closed an important gap with the US in spaceflight. The country’s state-run Xinhua News Agency says (via The Telegraph) an experimental reusable spacecraft successfully landed on September 6th after spending two days in orbit. Detail… Source
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Watch ULA abort a rocket launch at the last moment
Most rocket launch aborts are largely uneventful, but United Launch Alliance’s latest was… dramatic. The spaceflight outfit had to abort its NROL-44 mission (via Parabolic Arc) just three seconds before it was due to start, with the Delta IV rocket… Source
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