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.
The Federal Aviation Administration released the Final Environmental Impact Statement and its Record of Decision regarding the matter this morning. The Record of Decision approves SpaceX to operate Starship-Super Heavy at Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, clearing the final major regulatory hurdle for the company’s next-generation launch vehicle on Florida’s Space Coast.
2026 promises to be the most transformative year in American spaceflight since the Apollo era. From Artemis II astronauts circling the Moon to the first commercial space stations, here’s what’s coming.
The Department of the Air Force has officially signed off on a plan that lets SpaceX redevelop Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral SFS for Starship and Super Heavy operations. Their Record of Decision lays out how the company can rebuild the pad, transport hardware, and eventually fly and land the massive booster and ship right here on the Space Coast.
Space X’s massive Starship has been designed with the capacity to boost up to 150 tons into low-Earth orbit, far more than rockets currently in common use. With its success, the potential for launching larger payloads — whether cargo, satellites, or entire interplanetary spacecraft — becomes more tantalizing to deep space mission designers looking to explore other planets and asteroids.
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.
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.
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.
