Covering All Things Florida
Axiom Space has secured another trip to the International Space Station after NASA selected the Houston-based company for a fifth commercial crew mission to the orbital outpost.
Aside from the launchpads at KSC and Vandenberg, MARS, or the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, is the third busiest launch site in the United States. MARS, also called Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), offers different launch trajectories that are not available at Florida launch sites. Typically, Wallops supports the launch and recovery of sounding rockets, which are small payloads compared to what is launched in Florida.
When the newest American cargo spacecraft lifts off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral this September, it will carry more than supplies, science experiments, and spare parts to the International Space Station. Stenciled on its side will be the name of a man who never got the chance to return to Earth, but whose spirit continues to travel beyond it: William “Willie” C. McCool.
Northrop Grumman has chosen to christen its first Cygnus XL spacecraft the S.S. William “Willie” C. McCool, honoring the pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia’s final mission. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander and test pilot, was among the seven astronauts lost on February 1, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated during re-entry after a 16-day research mission.
SpaceX, NASA and the Crew 11 astronauts beat the clouds and rain showers and launched before summer showers washed over Kennedy Space Center today, but just barely. With dark skies and rain rapidly advancing from the south, liftoff of SpaceX’s 18th crewed flight was at 11:43 AM ET from venerable Launch Complex 39A. Crew 11’s four astronauts are now on their way to the International Space Station after today’s launch, with an expected arrival time at the orbital outpost around 3 AM ET tomorrow, August 2.
Crew-9 is back…finally! All four astronauts are happy to be home, with two of them perhaps even more so than their crew mates.
It’s finally time for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to come home! If everything goes according to plan, one of the most talked about journeys in American spaceflight will come to an end with a splashdown tomorrow evening somewhere off the coast of Florida.
It was a good day to have a good day here in Florida, and that’s exactly what NASA, SpaceX and Crew-10 had today at Kennedy Space Center. Falcon 9 lifted off carrying three astronauts and one cosmonaut towards orbit and the International Space Station just as the sun was starting to set in the west. Some seven and a half minutes later, SpaceX booster B1090 completed its duty for the day by landing at LZ-1 in Cape Canaveral, 8.8 miles south of LC-39A.
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Posted inISS, NASA, Space News, SpaceXMarch 10, 2025 – Kennedy Space Center, FL – It’s “all systems go” for Crew 10 following their arrival at Kennedy Space Center in Florida last Friday. The crew has since successfully completed a wet dress rehearsal in preparation for their six-month mission.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have had their missions extended yet again, this time until at least March, and possibly April 2025. Originally planned as an eight-day mission, Williams and Wilmore’s straightforward task was to take Boeing’s Starliner on its debut flight with crew, dock at ISS for a brief visit before returning home. That was not meant to be.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist, and private astronaut, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as the next Administrator of NASA. Isaacman, best known to the general public as the commander of both the groundbreaking Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn space missions and the first private citizen to conduct a spacewalk, is also the CEO of the payment processing giant Shift4, a rapidly growing company that Isaacman started when he was sixteen years old.
SpaceX launched the latest resupply mission for the International Space Station this evening with a Falcon 9 launch from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff was at 9:29 PM EDT into skies that cleared just in time for the launch.