A potential new way to travel through space launched aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1 located on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. The mission, named “Beginning of the Swarm,” put two payloads into a Sun-synchronous orbit. The flight lifted off at 22:32 UTC on April 23, 2024. One of the two payloads aboard the mission is NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3). The goal is to test a new composite that can be folded up inside something as small as a CubeSat and still deploy and remain rigid once in space. For this test, the solar sail is designed to fit inside ..read more

During the last full week of April, forthcoming launches include three Starlink missions with two planned from different coasts over the weekend, and another two more Falcon 9 flights lifting customer satellites. The first of these is the delayed WorldView Legion 1 & 2 mission which was originally due to fly last week and is now scheduled for Wednesday. The first Starlink mission of the week also saw another milestone reached with the 300th landing of a Falcon 9 booster on the Group 6-53 mission. The fifth Electron to launch this year carried two demonstration missions into two notably di ..read more

In December 2023 and February 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft, currently in orbit around and investigating Jupiter and the Jovian system, made several close flybys of the innermost of the Galilean moons, Io. During the flybys, Juno came as close as 1,500 kilometers from the surface of Io, during which extensive data and imagery of the moon were captured. From the imagery and data, scientists were able to make the first up-close observations of the northern latitudes of Io, as well as sharp mountains and lava lakes. Furthermore, Juno’s recent flybys of Jupiter allowed scientists to refine their u ..read more

After the historic IFT-3 launch in March, the Starship program is proceeding with plans to fly Ship 29 and Booster 11 on IFT-4, potentially in May, while future versions of the vehicle are starting to take shape. STARSHIP FLIGHT 4 PREPARATIONS Following the successful static test firing campaigns of the ship and booster, both vehicles are in the Starbase production area being worked on to prepare for the upcoming fourth flight of Starship itself. Ship 29’s static test firing at Starbase suborbital pad B on March 25, 2024. (Credit: BocaChicaGal for NSF/L2) Ship 29 fired all six engines for ..read more

China’s upcoming and already operational startup aerospace companies are showing significant progress as of late. Both Tianlong-3 and ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3) are getting closer to flight, while governmental rockets currently carry the payloads. Additionally, three more rockets of the Chang Zheng family have been launched in the last few weeks. LandSpace progresses ZhuQue-3 and moves maiden flight to the left LandSpace recently announced that the development of its ZhuQue-3 rocket is progressing faster than expected. The program’s chief engineer detailed in an interview that the first launch is moving ..read more

Later this year, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center with one of the most highly-anticipated and monumental planetary science missions of the decade — Europa Clipper. The mission will see the spacecraft travel to the smallest of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, Europa, to investigate the characteristics of the moon, including proving the existence of a subsurface ocean and the possibility of habitable conditions being contained within that ocean. Europa Clipper is currently undergoing final construction and testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsio ..read more

With seven Falcon 9 launches flown this month already, SpaceX’s rapid pace continues with another three flights planned for this coming week. There are two planned launches on Wednesday, April 17, from both the east and west coasts, and another on Thursday, April 18. Additionally, a Chinese Chang Zheng 2D launched on Monday, with another expected to fly on Saturday. Not content with breaking new cadence records in the first quarter of the year with an impressive 31 launches, SpaceX continued to reach new milestones last week. The company celebrated the first 20th launch and landing of a boost ..read more

United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV rocket has successfully launched Tuesday on its final flight, the NROL-70 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. Liftoff from SLC-37B at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station has happened at 12:53 PM EDT (17:53 UTC) following a scrub on the initial attempt over a week ago. The launch marks the 45th and last flight of the Delta IV, which first flew on Nov. 20, 2002. Along with the Atlas V, it was one of two rockets developed under the original phase of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV — now National Security Space Launch, or NSSL) program ..read more

The second week of April not only has a long-awaited total solar eclipse but also orbital launches from Russia and the United States. Besides the long-awaited NROL-70 Delta IV Heavy finale, there was to be a test flight of the Russian Angara rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia and a handful of Falcon 9 launches. Delta IV Heavy’s final flight with a mission for the National Reconnaissance Office on Tuesday, April 9 has now taken place. The NROL-70 and Angara flights were both scheduled for Tuesday, April 9 – although the latter scrubbed with a few minutes remaining in the count – wh ..read more

On Sunday, April 7 SpaceX launched the Bandwagon-1 rideshare mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 7:16 PM EDT (23:16 UTC). This flight carried 11 spacecraft for six customers, including a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite for South Korea. The payloads are heading for a 45.4 degree inclination, with at least one deployment orbit at around 590 kilometers in altitude. SpaceX has not released details of the second stage operations for this flight. It is possible there will also be a lower deployment altitude for some payloads. The Falcon 9 booster used ..read more