Official NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 portrait: (L-R) Stephanie Wilson, Aleksandr Gorbunov, Nick Hague, and Zena Cardman. NASA
NASA today announced the four astronauts that will travel aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station later this year: Zena Cardman will be the Mission Commander, Nick Hague will be the Pilot, along with Stephanie Wilson and Russian Mission Specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov will travel to ISS no earlier than August 2024.
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.
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.”
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.
Axiom Space’s third commercial astronaut mission, Ax-3, is set to be a historic event as the first all-European commercial astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission underscores a new era in space travel, where access to low-Earth orbit (LEO) is becoming increasingly commercialized and international.
SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 4, 2024. The missio n is carrying a powerful telecommunications satellite for the Swedish company Ovzon Photo: Charles Boyer / FMN
A SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying a telecommunications satellite for Swedish-American company Ovzon lifted off from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Station at 6:04pm EST this evening. After carrying its part of the mission, the booster used for the mission returned for a successful landing at Space-X’s Landing Zone 1 only a short distance away.
A SpaceX Falcon9 rocket lifts off from pad LC40. Image by Richard P. Gallagher/FMN
Next Up: The Ovzon-3 mission is scheduled to launch on 1-3-2024 at 6:04pm from LC40
The Ovzon-3 mission involves the launch of the first privately funded and developed Swedish geostationary satellite. As you can imagine, it’s quite a big deal for Sweden, as the country joins the international community of commercial spaceflight.
Timelapse of Falcon 9 Rising from Cape Canaveral Saturday, December 2, 2023 Photo by: Charles Boyer / FMN
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on the company’s 125th Starlink mission Saturday night, and added another group of Starlink satellites into the growing constellation of over 5,500 small satellites that provide internet access globally for its customers.
Yesterday evening at 8:28pm SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon9 rocket carrying a Cargo Dragon capsule to the ISS. It was loaded with about 6500 pounds of food and water and research experiments to be carried out over the next six months. Lift off occurred from LC39A at KSC in Florida.
Falcon9 rocket on LC40 during the pre-launch vent. 8-31-23 Photo: Richard Gallagher / FMN
Update
Launch occurred at 12:05am on 11-8-23 from LC40 at CCASA in Florida. SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon9 rocket caring 23 Starlink satellites. The first stage booster B1073 which has made 11 other launches and landings again successfully landed at sea on the barge Just Read the Instruction.
Image highlights of Starlink Group 6-27 launch on 11-8-23. Photos by Richard Gallagher / FMNVideo by Richard Gallagher / FMN
Join other Space Coast spectators tonight under the stars as SpaceX marks its 81st rocket launch this year with the launch of Starlink 6-27. Tonight’s mission (11/7/23) will add more Starlink satellites to the growing global satellite constellation. SpaceX is targeting a launch window between 11:01pm and 3:00am. Launch updates and photographs of this launch attempt will be added to this article when available.
