Covering All Things Florida
This Valentines Day, SpaceX is setting hearts aflutter with not one, but two rocket launches. The Falcon 9 rockets are scheduled to take off from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
In the early hours of Thursday, NASA’s latest Earth science mission began its journey to space, marking the start of a mission to better our understanding of the planet’s marine life and atmospheric conditions.
For 10 days in January, the Peregrine Lunar Lander, made by US company Astrobotic, kept spaceflight observers on the edge of their seat. Peregrine, the first US lunar lander in over 50 years was to mark our country’s return to the moon. More importantly, the landing was a major step in sending a manned lander to the moon in 2026 under the Artemis program. A propellant leak cut that mission short, and eventually scuttled it with the craft making a fiery return to earth.
In an era where understanding Earth’s climate dynamics is more critical than ever, NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, will be a vital asset to furthering and tracking our knowledge of the Planet. Set to launch from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40, this mission embodies the culmination of years of meticulous planning and collaboration between NASA and SpaceX, aiming to extend our comprehension of the planet’s climate system and its intricate processes. Lift is set for 1:33am Tuesday morning with the first stage booster returning to LZ 1 at CCSFS.
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.
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.
In an NG-20 pre-launch media teleconference on January, 26, 2024, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX VP Build and Flight Reliability, revealed that a new access door had been added to the fairing that protects the Cygnus spacecraft atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. But Why?
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.”
Northrop Grumman (NG) and SpaceX are set to launch the Cygnus spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket next week from Florida to the International Space Station. The launch window opens at 12:29 PM on Monday, January 29th.
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.
