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SpaceX is planning to launch the first of three Falcon 9 missions over the next five days today. There’s another launch scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, April 18, and a final one set for Monday, April 22nd. All three will be ferrying a tranche of Starlink Group 6 satellites to orbit. Today’s launch is from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.
As the aerospace community looks toward the future of crewed space travel, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is poised to become a pivotal player in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. This morning’s rollout of the crew capsule ahead of the first crewed launch marks a significant milestone for Boeing. The Starliner spacecraft was moved from the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center this morning at 4am to the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in order to be attached to the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
In the new era of both public and private spaceflight, Florida’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) continues to serve as a major launchpad for America’s ambitions in space. Tom Engler, the Director of Center Planning and Development at KSC, recently highlighted the growing synergy between the federal government, private space ventures, and military advancements in space travel during a speech at the 2024 Florida TaxWatch Spring Meeting held last week in in Winter Park.
According to a comprehensive new report released last week by the World Economic Forum in partnership with McKinsey & Company, the global space economy is poised for explosive growth, potentially reaching $1.8 trillion by the year 2035.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 tonight from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and sent another twenty-three Starlink satellites to orbit. Liftoff occurred at 09:22 PM EDT on a crisp, clear spring evening on the Space Coast.
Note: Originally published by Charles Boyer at Talk of Titusville
Based in the United States, Astranis says they have made a significant breakthrough in delivering satellite internet with Omega, dubbing it the “pound-for-pound the most powerful communications satellite”. Omega is destined for higher geostationary orbits approximately 22,000 miles above the planet. This positioning is notably different from the lower Earth orbits utilized by Starlink satellites, which orbit sixty times closer.
“With Omega, our customers simply get more throughput at lower prices”
Astranis CEO John Gedmark
On a bittersweet day in in the annals of spaceflight, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) said goodbye to one of its most powerful and storied rockets. With an ontime launch at 12:53 PM EDT on April 9, the Delta IV Heavy rocket soared into the skies for its final mission, carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), designated NROL-70.
Sunday night saw an on-time launch for SpaceX’s latest Falcon 9 mission known as Bandwagon-1. The rideshare mission, SpaceX’s 35th of 2024, carried 11 satellites to a mid-inclination orbit (45 degrees) for six different companies. A mid-inclination orbit places satellites over populated areas rather than providing global coverage seen with standard polar orbits.
In the quiet, expansive steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Expedition 70 to the ISS officially ended. NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya from Belarus, concluded their space mission with a parachute-assisted landing in the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 3:17 a.m. EDT on Saturday, April 6 (12:17 p.m. Kazakhstan time).
In a push that could adversely impact private space companies, President Joe Biden is advocating for the inclusion of space launch operations within the scope of U.S. airspace taxes. This proposal, part of the president’s budget released last month, aims to revise the longstanding aviation excise tax framework to incorporate contributions from private space entities like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, as reported by The New York Times.
At an April 3, 2024, news conference, NASA announced its approach for the development, construction, and fielding of one (or potentially more) lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) as one more element of the Artemis Program. As opposed to selecting one company to produce an LTV, three “awardees” were selected to compete in a rather complicated process for the final project award.
One of the most iconic parts of the Apollo missions were videos and photos of astronauts driving around a lunar rover on the moon’s surface. Used for the final three Apollo missions — Apollo 15, 16, and 17 — the 462-pound rovers were built by Boeing and had a top speed of 6 MPH. They were used for mobility and transporting astronauts and equipment, and were also equipped with a color television camera that showed live views to audiences back on Earth of the astronauts driving on the lunar surface. The cameras also provided remote views of the liftoff of the Lunar Module’s ascent module, and provided the only views of humans lifting off of the surface of the moon as they began their return to Earth.
