Covering All Things Florida
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.
Earlier today, SpaceX announced that they are delaying their planned launch of Falcon 9 carrying four astronauts to orbit aboard a Crew Dragon to the International Space Station for “teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.”
The mission on behalf of Axiom Space is dubbed Axiom-3 and will now launch NET on Thursday, January 18, 2024, at 4:49 PM EST.
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.
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.
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.
In the realm of space exploration, the notion of reusable rockets has seen a transformative development, one that has laid the framework for how humanity ventures into the cosmos in the immediate future.
SpaceX marked the end of the year with a launch record on December 28th. The commercial spaceflight company ended the year with 98 launches, including 91 Falcon 9, 5 Falcon Heavy, and two Starship launches.
Last Saturday, SpaceX made history again, flying and landing booster B1058 for a record-breaking 19th time.
UPDATED: Now set for 5:05PM Thursday due to bad weather in the recovery area.
Dragon to Return from ISS with Key Scientific Payload
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is set to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) tonight at 9:05 p.m. EST. NASA will provide coverage of the undocking beginning at 8:45PM EST on NASA TV, Youtube, and the agency’s website.
What does the “most powerful rocket in the world” even mean?
Innovation is foundational at SpaceX, the California-based company founded by Elon Musk in 2002. Not only has the company written a veritable laundry list of firsts, bests and mosts, it has also served as a cradle for former employees to start their own high-tech firms. Several SpaceX alumni startups are prospering, while others are still developing products and preparing to enter the marketplace.
Space X’s weather-delayed Starlink mission is set to launch tonight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Pad 40. Weather may still be a problem.
