The test comes a day after Boeing's newStarliner spaceshiplaunched a pair ofNASAastronauts intospacefor its first crewed test flight to the International Space Station. The legacy aerospace company's launch lagged four years behind the one for SpaceX's competingCrew Dragoncapsule, perhaps giving ...
The recovery team are also communicating with the crew in the capsule to assess their health after reentry. (Image credit: SpaceX) September 15, 2024 at 3:46 PM Polaris Dawn splashdown! (Image credit: SpaceX) "Welcome back to Earth, Polaris Dawn!" At 3:37 am EDT (0737 UTC), after...
As the Starship came in to reentry, there was glowing of hot metal and wrinkling of the material on the side of the rocket visible on the live stream, but it did make it through the maximum heating moment and splashed down successfully on the ocean. The vehicle looked fairly damaged when...
The Dragon capsule from SpaceX is currently the only vehicle capable of ferrying cargo to and from the ISS (when the rocket doesn’tblow up during launch, that is). Russia’s Progress and Cygnus spacecraft can deliver supplies, but both capsules are designed to burn up during reentry into...
Starship is offering views throughout its flight today. And engineers on the company’s webcast say that’s made possible by Starlink, SpaceX’s constellation of internet-beaming satellites. “As with previous flights, Starlink may actually enable us to talk with the ship through reentry with...
Similarly, the Starship capsule made it roughly 10 minutes into its flight, reaching an altitude considered to be beyond the edge of space — about 93 miles (150 kilometers) above Earth’s surface — but SpaceX was forced to terminate the mission when ground control lo...
SpaceX ultimately plans to use the Starship capsule as the landing vehicle that will ferry NASA astronauts to the lunar surface as soon as 2026 as part of the Artemis III mission, and the company has government contracts worth up to nearly $4 billion to complete the task. Eventua...
Each moon crew will rely on NASA’s own rocket and capsule to leave Earth, but meet up with Starship in lunar orbit for the ride down to the surface. SpaceX already is selling tourist trips around the moon. The first private lunar customer, a Japanese tycoon, pulled out of the trip ...
Plasma surrounds SpaceX's Starship vehicle during reentry on its fourth flight test on June 6, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX via X) Starship's reentry was a nail-biter, as pieces of the vehicle could be seen burning away as the spacecraft made its way through Earth's atmosphere. Despite...
This operation was planned down to the minute with little room for error. Trying out new spacesuits from a spacecraft new to spacewalking added to the risk. So did the fact that the entire capsule was exposed to the vacuum of space. ...