Covering All Things Florida
All eyes will be on Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday November 9, 2025. Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy lift rocket will attempt to successfully launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission (NG-2) to an orbit around Mars.
Flight 11 was the final launch of the Block 2 variant of Starship. That mission was promising, and both the Booster and Starship survived and splashed down successfully to their respective targets.
Following this mission, SpaceX won’t be launching Starship for a hot minute, taking some time to make some significant changes to both their facilities at Starbase and the launch vehicles.
For scientific survey probes and landers that head into deep space, power generation is a critical problem: think of exploring space like backpacking across a continent a place like Antarctica: no stores, no roads, and months and months of cold temperatures. Solar power is handy, light and handy, but useless at night or in a blizzard. NASA’s nuclear technology could offer a solution in such scenarios.
Astrobotic has announced that its Griffin-1 lunar mission is now targeting July 2026, a shift that gives engineers time to complete propulsion integration and qualify the lander’s engines. Their update, published today, also outlines steady progress on systems from tanks to software as the company prepares to deliver multiple payloads to the Moon’s south-polar Nobile region.
With this news, any chance of a Falcon Heavy launch from Kennedy Space Center in 2025 is now kaput.
At 12:01 AM ET this morning, the federal government officially entered a shutdown after Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution funding key agencies. The shutdown’s effects reach far, and here on the Space Coast, the heart of America’s space program at Kennedy Space Center, the pain was felt instantly.
A rising sun wasn’t the only thing lighting up the Florida sky this week. Cape Canaveral was alive with rocket fire, echoing a surge of launches that lit the sky in rapid succession. In just a few days, three major missions—Starlink, IMAP, and Ku3 (Project Kuiper)—departed from Florida shores, each on a different path but together marking a bracing tempo of space activity.
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.
NASA’s Perseverance rover may have stumbled on its most compelling clue yet in the hunt for ancient life on Mars. A rock sample taken from a dried-up riverbed in Jezero Crater, known as “Sapphire Canyon,” shows signs that could point to past microbial activity. The sample was collected in 2024 from a rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls,” and new findings published Wednesday in Nature highlight the presence of potential biosignatures.
These biosignatures—chemical or structural hints that might come from living organisms—aren’t proof of life, but they raise the stakes. More testing is needed to determine whether these clues came from biology or purely chemical processes.
Acting NASA Administrator Sean P. Duffy says the agency is changing course—and in a big way. In an interview this week, Duffy made it clear that NASA will be putting much of its Earth and climate science work on the back burner and focusing almost entirely on space exploration.
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.
