SpaceX Launches Northrup Grumman NG-20 From the Cape

January 31, 2024Posted inFalcon 9, NASA, Space News, SpaceX, US Space Force
SpaceX Falcon 9 Lifts off from Pad SLC-40 at Canaveral Space Force Station on January 30, 2024.
Photo: Chris Leymarie, Florida Media Now

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Jan. 30, 2024 SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying the Northrup Grumman NG-20 mission toward ISS this afternoon. The launch was at 12:07 PM EST from the company’s launch pad at SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Once it had completed its part of the mission, Booster 1077 completed its tenth flight when it safely touched down at Landing Zone 1, about 5.6 miles to the south of where it launched a little more than eight minutes earlier.

SpaceX Delays NG-20 Launch By One Day

January 27, 2024Posted inFalcon 9, NASA, Space News, SpaceX
Northrup Grumman Cygnus NG-20 inside its launch fairings. Photo: NASA
Northrup Grumman Cygnus NG-20 inside its launch fairings.
Photo: NASA

The launch of Northrup-Grumman’s Cygnus NG-20 has been delayed until Tuesday, January 30th at 12:07 PM EST.

William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of Build and Flight Reliability, said in a news conference on January 26th that, “it’s taken a lot of modifications on our part to get this hardware ready to go fly, and we want to make sure it goes right. We think it is good to delay a little bit and make sure we get all this activity right and we’re ready to get this cargo inserted into Cygnus and get ready to fly on Tuesday.”

Axiom-3 Launches From Kennedy Space Center

January 19, 2024Posted inCrewed, Falcon 9, KSC, NASA, Space News, SpaceX
Launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 with four astronauts aboard on the Axiom-3 Mission.
Photo: Charles Boyer

Minutes before a warm front brought heavy showers to Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX launched the Axiom 3 mission on a 16 day round trip to the ISS. Four Axiom Space astronauts rode the chartered Space-X Crew Dragon module to orbit on top of a Falcon 9 booster at 4:49 PM EST this evening. The all-European crew is expected to dock at ISS in two days’ time and stay aboard the station until February 3, 2024.

SpaceX Delays Axiom-3 Launch

January 17, 2024Posted inAviation and Space News, NASA, Space News, SpaceX
Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon sitting on Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center on January 17, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer
Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon sitting on Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center on January 17, 2024
Photo: Charles Boyer

Earlier today, SpaceX announced that they are delaying their planned launch of Falcon 9 carrying four astronauts to orbit aboard a Crew Dragon to the International Space Station for “teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.” 

The mission on behalf of Axiom Space is dubbed Axiom-3 and will now launch NET on Thursday, January 18, 2024, at 4:49 PM EST.

The Best Places To View a Crewed Rocket Launch

January 16, 2024Posted inFlorida News, General, Space News
CST-100 Capsule launches
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crewed capsule heading to space.
Photo: Charles Boyer

Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Florida’s Space Coast every year to view a rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

While the area is accommodating and friendly to tourists, those same tourists often ask the same question of the locals: “Where is the best places to view a rocket launch?” The answer to “where is the best place to view a launch?” is best prefaced with “it depends.”

Titusville-Based Space Initiatives Selected By NASA To Study Potential Interstellar Mission

Titusville-Based Space Initiatives Selected By NASA To Study Potential Interstellar Mission

January 13, 2024Posted inAviation and Space News, NASA, Space News
Shining brightly in this Hubble image is our closest stellar neighbor: Proxima Centauri. Although it looks bright through the eye of Hubble, as you might expect from the nearest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri is not visible to the naked eye. Space Initiatives, Inc. in Titusville plans to study the possibility of a mission to this star in this century.
Photo: Creative Commons

It sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie: a space mission to visit another star to find out if life or the potential of it exists there.

NASA Unveils the X-59 Supersonic Test Aircraft

January 12, 2024Posted inAviation, Aviation and Space News, NASA
Lockheed Martin X-59
Photography By Garry Tice 1011 Lockheed Way, Palmdale, Ca. 93599 Date: 12/12/2023

NASA unveiled America’s new X-59 aircraft today at LMs Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. The experimental aircraft is designed as an experimental test-bed for “quiet supersonic” air travel and it is hoped that it will serve as a serious starting point for commercial aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound, this time in a quieter, more efficient manner than previous airplanes like the Concorde.

Celestis: Enterprise Flight Remains On Course

January 9, 2024Posted inAviation and Space News, Space News, United Launch Alliance, Vulcan
ULA’s Vulcan lifting off in the early hours of January 8, 2024.
Photo: Charles Boyer, FMN

Celestis, the Texas company that provides space-based memorial services for the families of loved ones is reporting that its Enterprise Flight payload launched on ULA’s Vulcan rocket Monday morning is successful and traveling 85 million miles (297 mil km) from Earth into deep space.

ULA’s Vulcan lifting off in the early hours of January 8, 2024.
Photo: Charles Boyer, FMN

Celestis, the Texas company that provides space-based memorial services for the families of loved ones is reporting that its Enterprise Flight payload launched on ULA’s Vulcan rocket Monday morning is successful and traveling 85 million miles (297 mil km) from Earth into deep space.

ULA: Most Vulcan Systems Have Atlas or Delta Heritage

January 5, 2024Posted inAviation and Space News, United Launch Alliance, Vulcan
Graphic showing components of ULA Vulcan Centaur
Graphic: United Launch Alliance

In a press conference today leading up to the maiden launch of the ULA Vulcan in the early hours of Monday morning, ULA Vice President of Government and Commercial Programs Gary Wentz stated that the vast majority of the new rocket is either flight-proven or a variant of flight-proven hardware. He said that “the only hardware that hasn’t flown prior to this flight is the BE-4 engine. All the other or variants thereof have flown on Atlas or Delta flights, missions for other customers.”

Vulcan Rolled Out To Launch Pad, Set To Go Early Monday

January 5, 2024Posted inAviation and Space News, Space News, United Launch Alliance, Vulcan
ULA Vulcan on the pad
Vulcan on the launch pad at SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on January 8, 2023
Photo by TJ Waller / Florida Media Now

United Launch Alliance moved its new Vulcan rocket to the launch pad at SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force station this afternoon. Vulcan will make its maiden launch at 2:18 am EST Monday January 8. The latest forecasts call for an 85% chance of acceptable launch conditions weather-wise, leaving only a 15% Probability of Violation of weather criteria. That forecast will likely be updated by the 45th Weather Wing of the US Space Force as soon as tomorrow and is subject to change.