For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – With greatly reduced fanfare and no family members present in response to the continuing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic a new Russian-American trio of spacefarers successfully launched to orbit aboard an upgraded Soyuz rocket this morning Thursday, April 9 and docked at the International Space Station (ISS) just six hours later. The new spaceflyer
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Following the problem plagued maiden launch of Boeing’s Starliner astronaut crew capsule in December, the company announced they will fly a second uncrewed test flight to verify the space taxi is safe and reliable enough to be entrusted to launch NASA astronauts in the future to the International Space Station (ISS). Boeing
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, FL – The sixth and final satellite in a constellation of critical and ultra secure military communications satellites for the nations warfighters – namely the Advanced Extremely High Frequency- 6 (AEHF-6) comsat – streaked to geostationary orbit Thursday afternoon March 26 on the venerable Atlas V on the first mission for
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, FL – In what may be the last launch for a while from the military run Eastern range at Cape Canaveral due to ever expanding threats from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the most powerful version of the venerable Atlas V rocket manufactured by rocket builder United Launch Alliance (ULA) is poised
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA and SpaceX have jointly announced that they are targeting May – roughly two months or so from now – for the first launch of the private Crew Dragon ferry ship with two agency astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Demo-2 mission from the Florida Space Coast. That is
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – After engine troubles scrubbed the first try on Sunday, SpaceX engineers finally launched the 1st 5th launched Falcon 9 on the 2nd try and the next batch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites successfully achieved orbit from the Florida Space Coast – but only after one of the nine first stage Merlin
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – SpaceX is retargeting the next Falcon 9 Starlink launch to Wednesday morning, March 18, 2020 following Sunday morning’s automatically aborted liftoff of the ‘flight-proven’ rocket moments after the first stage engines dramatically ignited for the planned blastoff of the next Starlink mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, FL under picture perfect
SpaceX Completes Static Fire Test for Next Starlink, Launch Reset to Sunday Morning March 15: Photos
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – After multiple delays SpaceX engineers finally completed a successful static fire test of the Falcon 9 first stage engines on Friday the 13th this evening for the upcoming sixth Starlink launch on Sunday from the Florida Space Coast on a milestone mission– amidst the ever growing coronavirus pandemic that has forced
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM KENNEDY SPACE CENTER/CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, FL – Astronauts have captured a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship with the robotic arm for the final time after the vessel arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) this morning, Monday, March 9 two days after blastoff from the Florida Space Coast. The final first generation SpaceX Dragon 1
SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – After conducting a nationwide contest where kindergarten through 12th grade students across the United States submitted essays to “Name the Rover” NASA has selected 9 candidate names as finalists “to come up with a fitting name for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.” The nine candidate names were selected from over 28,000 essays submitted after