SpaceX

[PHXPhlyer]

Four astronauts, including Turkey’s first, arrive at space station
The rendezvous came about 37 hours after the Axiom quartet’s Thursday-evening liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fo ... rcna134969

A four-man crew including Turkey’s first astronaut arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) early on Saturday for a two-week stay in the latest such mission arranged entirely at commercial expense by Texas-based startup company Axiom Space.

The rendezvous came about 37 hours after the Axiom quartet’s Thursday evening liftoff in a rocket ship from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Both the Crew Dragon vessel and the Falcon 9 rocket that carried it to orbit were supplied, launched and operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX under contract with Axiom, as they were in the first two Axiom missions to the ISS since 2022.

Once the astronauts reach the space station, they fall under the responsibility of NASA’s mission control operation in Houston.

The Crew Dragon autonomously docked with the ISS at 5:42 a.m. EDT as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles over the South Pacific, a live NASA webcast showed.

Both were soaring in tandem around the globe at the hypersonic speed of about 17,500 miles per hour as they joined together in orbit.

With coupling achieved, it was expected to take about two hours for the sealed passageway between the space station and crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks before hatches can be opened, allowing the newly arrived astronauts to move aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Plans call for the Axiom-3 crew to spend roughly 14 days in microgravity conducting more than 30 scientific experiments, many of them focused on the effects of spaceflight on human health and disease.

The multinational team was led by Michael López-Alegría, 65, a Spanish-born retired NASA astronaut and Axiom executive making his sixth flight to the space station. He also commanded Axiom’s debut mission — the first all-private voyage to the ISS — in April 2022.

His second-in-command for Ax-3 is Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, 49. Rounding out the team are Swedish aviator Marcus Wandt, 43, representing the European Space Agency, and Alper Gezeravcı, 44, a Turkish Air Force veteran and fighter pilot, making his nation’s first human spaceflight.

They will be welcomed aboard ISS by the seven members of the station’s current regular crew — two Americans from NASA, one astronaut each from Japan and Denmark and three Russian cosmonauts.

Since its founding eight years ago, Houston-based Axiom has carved out a business catering to foreign governments and wealthy private patrons aiming to put their own astronauts into orbit. The company charges at least $55 million per seat for its services organizing, training and equipping customers for spaceflight.

Axiom also is one of a handful of companies building a commercial space station of its own intended to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.

Launched to orbit in 1998, the ISS has been continuously occupied since 2000 under a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 countries belonging to the European Space Agency.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

SpaceX launches private Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS (video)
The freighter will reach the orbiting lab early Thursday morning (Feb. 1).

https://www.space.com/spacex-cygnus-car ... SmartBrief

SpaceX launched Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus spacecraft today (Jan. 30), sending the freighter and its 4 tons of cargo toward the International Space Station.

The Cygnus lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today at 12:07 p.m. EST (1707 GMT).

The launch kicked off the 20th operational cargo mission for Cygnus. SpaceX was not involved in the previous 19; they all lifted off atop Antares or Atlas V rockets.

Related: Facts about Cygnus, Northrop Grumman's cargo ship
https://www.space.com/cygnus-spacecraft.html


A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches Northrop Grumman's NG-20 cargo mission to the International Space Station on Jan. 30, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX/NASA)
The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned today, acing its touchdown at Cape Canaveral about 8 minutes and 20 seconds after launch. It was the 10th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Cygnus, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage in low Earth orbit around 14 minutes and 45 seconds after launch. The freighter then began making its own way to the International Space Station (ISS).

If all goes according to plan, Cygnus will arrive at the orbiting lab at 4:20 a.m. EST (0920 GMT) on Thursday (Feb. 1). You can watch its rendezvous and docking activities live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket comes back to Earth for a landing after launching Northrop Grumman's NG-20 cargo mission to the International Space Station on Jan. 30, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX/NASA)
Northrop Grumman named this Cygnus vehicle after Patty Hilliard Robertson, a NASA astronaut who died in a private plane crash in 2001. She was selected to the astronaut corps in 1998 and was supposed to fly to the ISS in 2022.

The freighter is packed with more than 8,200 pounds (3,720 kilograms) of supplies and scientific hardware. Among the research gear is a cartilage-growing experiment that could help address joint damage and disease here on Earth and a European Space Agency project that will test the 3D printing of metals in microgravity.

You can learn more about this cargo mission, called NG-20, via NASA's overview.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/o ... y-mission/

RELATED STORIES:
—  Track the ISS: How and where to see it

 — Facts about SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket

 —  International Space Station — Everything you need to know

Cygnus will spend about six months docked to the ISS, then head back down for a fiery destruction in Earth's atmosphere.

One experiment aboard Cygnus, called the Kentucky Re-entry Probe Experiment-2, will gather data during this death dive, taking "measurements to demonstrate a thermal protection system for spacecraft and their contents during re-entry in Earth's atmosphere, which can be difficult to replicate in ground simulations," NASA officials wrote in their NG-20 mission overview.

Cygnus is one of three robotic cargo craft that currently service the ISS, along with SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Russia's Progress vehicle. Progress, like Cygnus, is an expendable spacecraft, but Dragon is reusable, surviving the trip through Earth's atmosphere and splashing down softly under parachutes in the ocean.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Ho Hum.
Another successful launch and booster landing.

SpaceX launches NASA's PACE satellite to study Earth's oceans, air and climate

https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-n ... SmartBrief

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/world/na ... index.html

PP

[Boac]

Axiom crew are back on wet land.

[PHXPhlyer]

SpaceX rolls giant Starship rocket to launch pad ahead of 3rd test flight (photos)
Starship's two stages rolled out separately and were stacked on Saturday (Feb. 10).

https://www.space.com/spacex-rolls-star ... SmartBrief

SpaceX continues to gear up for the third test flight of its giant Starship rocket and the private spaceflight company has some amazing photos to prove it.

The company rolled the two stages of its latest Starship rocket to the launch pad at Starbase, its site on South Texas' Gulf Coast, over the weekend.

SpaceX documented the milestone publicly, sharing three photos of the move in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday (Feb. 10).

Booster 10 begins the journey to the launch pad for testing. SpaceX posted this photo to X on Feb. 10, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX via X)
SpaceX then stacked the two elements — the huge Super Heavy booster and the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship upper stage — atop Starbase's orbital launch mount on Saturday night (Feb. 10), as NASASpaceflight.com noted.

Such work is part of the prep for Starship's third test flight, which SpaceX aims to launch in the coming weeks, provided a license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) comes through in time.

It's unclear when SpaceX will get that license, however. The FAA is still investigating what happened on Starship's second flight, which lifted off from Starbase last November. Starship flew well on that mission, notching milestones such as a nominal Super Heavy engine burn and successful stage separation. But both Starship and Super Heavy ended up exploding, and the flight ended just eight minutes after launch.

The first Starship flight, which launched last April, ended with the destruction of a tumbling Starship four minutes after liftoff. That vehicle experienced some problems with its first-stage burn, and its two stages failed to separate as planned.

SpaceX rolls the Starship upper-stage prototype called Ship 28 to the launch pad in South Texas for testing in February 2024. SpaceX posted this photo to X on Feb. 10, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX via X)


Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and it will be capable of delivering up to 150 tons of payload to low Earth orbit. SpaceX is developing the vehicle to expand humanity's footprint out into the solar system — especially to the fourth rock from the sun.

"We are mapping out a game plan to get a million people to Mars. Civilization only passes the single-planet Great Filter when Mars can survive even if Earth supply ships stop coming," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an X post on Saturday.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

SpaceX launching secret national security mission for US Space Force today
Liftoff of the USSF-124 mission is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. ET today

https://www.space.com/spacex-space-forc ... SmartBrief

SpaceX will launch a mysterious national security mission today (Feb. 14), and you can watch the action live.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the classified USSF-124 mission for the U.S. Space Force today from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, during a four-hour window that opens at 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company's account on X, beginning about 15 minutes before liftoff.

If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9's first stage will come back to Earth for a vertical touchdown at Cape Canaveral about eight minutes after liftoff. The launch webcast will end at that point, presumably at the request of the Space Force.

It will be the seventh launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

We don't know much about USSF-124. The Space Force remained mum about it until this morning, when it emailed out a statement saying that the mission is ready to fly.

That statement revealed that USSF-124 will send six satellites to orbit — two for the Missile Defense Agency and four for the Space Development Agency — but did not describe the spacecraft or their envisioned orbital duties.

"With each national security launch, we continue to strengthen America’s capabilities and its deterrence in the face of growing threats while adding stability to a very dynamic world," Col. Jim Horne, senior materiel leader for Space System Command's Launch Execution Delta, said in the emailed statement. "It's what we do in the Space Force, and we take that charge seriously."

USSF-124 could be part of a very busy stretch in spaceflight. At 7:30 p.m. EST tonight (0030 GMT on Feb. 15), for example, SpaceX plans to launch 22 of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Then, at 10:25 p.m. EST tonight (0325 GMT on Feb. 15), Russia will send the robotic Progress 87 freighter toward the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz rocket.

And SpaceX plans to launch IM-1, a private moon-landing mission, on Feb. 15 at 1:05 a.m. EST (0605 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, which is next door to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

'Odysseus' successfully launches in attempt to put first private lander on the moon
The launch was originally scheduled to take place Wednesday, but a glitch with the rocket’s methane fuel forced SpaceX to stand down.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/o ... rcna138908

Second time was a charm for a Houston-based company that launched a privately built moon lander into space early Thursday.

The spacecraft, developed by Intuitive Machines, lifted off at 1:05 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The lander rode into orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch was originally scheduled to take place Wednesday, but a glitch with the rocket’s methane fuel forced SpaceX to stand down.

Intuitive Machines is aiming to become the first to land a commercially built spacecraft on the lunar surface. If successful, it would also be the first moon landing for the U.S. in more than 50 years.

The lander, nicknamed Odysseus, is expected to spend a week in space before attempting to settle on the moon on Feb. 22.

The mission comes one month after a separate company tried — but ultimately failed — to similarly send a lander to the moon. That spacecraft, built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, suffered a crippling fuel leak shortly after launch that forced the company to scrap the entire mission.

Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to spur development of moon landers by private-sector companies that NASA could eventually hire to transport cargo and scientific instruments to the lunar surface.

On the coming flight, the lander will carry a mix of commercial cargo and NASA science instruments.

Odysseus is expected to touch down near the moon’s south pole, a region that has long been intriguing for scientists because water ice is thought to be relatively abundant within craters.

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is part of the agency’s Artemis program, which seeks to return astronauts to the moon over the next few years. NASA recently announced delays in a pair of coming Artemis missions, pushing a lunar fly-around that was to launch later this year to 2025 and postponing the first Artemis landing attempt to the following year.

NASA wants to eventually launch regular missions to the moon to build a base camp.

PP

[Boac]

SpaceX have published an analysis of the second Starship test flight. Interesting to note that the Staship had actually technically reached 'space' (150km) before the auto-destruct.

https://www.spacex.com/updates

[PHXPhlyer]

SpaceX, NASA successfully launch manned Crew-8 mission to International Space Station
The crew, set to return in the fall, will spend 6 months at the ISS.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sp ... rcna141584

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX and NASA on Sunday successfully launched their joint Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Together, NASA and SpaceX launched a crew of four to the ISS in the Dragon spacecraft, marking SpaceX’s eighth crew rotation mission to the ISS within NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Sunday's launch was the third attempt, after it was scrubbed twice before because of bad weather.

Engineers determined that a small crack on the hatch seal wouldn't present enough of an issue to abort the launch, and the mission achieved liftoff at 10:53 p.m. Mission crew members on the ground cheered when the first-stage booster separated and Dragon proceeded toward space shortly before 11 p.m.

The NASA astronauts are commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps and Russian Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who is also acting as mission specialist. It is the first mission to the ISS for all except Barratt, who is making his third visit.

The Dragon spacecraft was launched by the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX describes as a “reusable, two-stage rocket,” making it the first reusable rocket of its kind. Once it detaches from Dragon, it will land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The crew, set to return in the fall, will spend six months at the ISS. Days ago, administrators revealed they had found a small air leak at the space station.

“It’s not an impact to Crew-8, but I didn’t want anybody to be surprised,” ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano said at a Crew-8 mission briefing. He said that managers don’t believe the leak will affect crew safety but that “teams are watching it.”

While aboard the ISS, often referred to as a “floating laboratory," the crew will perform more than 200 science experiments as part of the long-term mission to prepare humanity for long-term stays in space.

Some of the experiments include taking stem cells to space to study their effects on degenerative disease, as well as looking at the cellular impact of microgravity and ultraviolet radiation on plants, with hopes that plants can remain an increasingly important part of nourishment during such lengthy stays.

The crew will also experiment with pressure cuffs on legs to see whether they alleviate health problems, including fluid shifts in astronauts in space experiencing weightlessness. With no gravity on the ISS, fluids in the body tend to shift upward toward the head, which can cause health problems with eye and head pressure — something astronauts are all too familiar with.

Spirulina, often used in smoothies down on Earth, is also being sent to space on the Crew-8 mission. The astronauts look to see whether microalgae could help to remove CO₂ from the air, providing both food and oxygen for astronauts.

It has been a busy year for SpaceX, which undertook almost 100 launches within the past year.

Asked about the seemingly routine nature of the increasingly busy launch schedule, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson cautioned against letting guards down.

“Spaceflight is hard. Spaceflight is risky. ... You never want to get into the frame of mind that it is so routine,” he said. “Every time we launch, it’s white-knuckle time, and especially if humans are on top.”

PP

[Karearea]

SpaceX, NASA successfully launch manned Crew-8 mission to International Space Station

...Engineers determined that a small crack on the hatch seal wouldn't present enough of an issue ...

...administrators revealed they had found a small air leak at the space station.

“It’s not an impact to Crew-8, but I didn’t want anybody to be surprised,” ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano said at a Crew-8 mission briefing. He said that managers don’t believe the leak will affect crew safety but that “teams are watching it.” ...

[PHXPhlyer]

First flight and successful landing of the booster.
5th flight for the capsule.

PP

[Boac]

One hopes the seal in question is not the one in ex-A's pool.

[PHXPhlyer]

He wouldn't want that one.
Already damaged.

PP

[Boac]

Following an apparently successful wet dress rehearsal of B10/SS28, there are strong rumours of a launch licence and slated launch date of 14/3. Popcorn ordered from Amazon.

[Boac]

There you go - in 'Black and White' https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission ... p-flight-3

An ambitious flight profile.

[PHXPhlyer]

SpaceX's Crew-7 capsule returns 4 astronauts to Earth with predawn splashdown (video)
News
By Mike Wall last updated about 6 hours ago
The quartet splashed down around 5:50 a.m. EDT on Tuesday (March 12).

https://www.space.com/nasa-spacex-crew- ... SmartBrief

The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-7 mission returned to Earth early Tuesday morning (March 12), with their homecoming broadcast live.

Crew-7's Dragon capsule, Endurance, splashed down at 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 UTC) off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. The recovery crew arrived at the capsule around three minutes later, with thermal cameras tracking the recovery operations.

The parachutes that had guided Endurance back to Earth were recovered with the recovery crew checking for both pyrotechnic residuals and poisonous materials. After these safety checks, the Dragon capsule was lifted from the Gulf of Mexico onto a recovery ship at 6:13 a.m. EDT (1013 GMT) using a hydraulic lift.

A screenshot showing the sucessfully deployed four parachuettes of the Dragon Capsule as it makes its descent on March 12


The Crew-7 astronauts exited the Endurance Dragon capsule at 6:36 a.m. EDT (1036 UTC), with Andy Mogensen assisted from the capsule first. After 199 days in low-Earth orbit and their descent back to Earth, the crew will visit a medical facility to check their health.

Endurance undocked from the International Space Station on Monday (March 11) after the astronauts' 6.5-month stay on the orbiting laboratory to begin Crew-7's journey home.

a white space capsule approaches the international space station, with a few clouds over the ocean in the background

Crew-7 consists of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov, a cosmonaut with Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.

The mission launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Aug. 26, 2023 and arrived at the orbiting complex a day later. The liftoff kicked off the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov and the second for Mogensen and Furukawa.

The Crew-7 quartet overlapped briefly with their successors, the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission, which arrived at the ISS last Tuesday (March 5).

As those mission names suggest, SpaceX has now launched eight operational astronaut flights to the ISS for NASA (plus one crewed test flight to the orbiting lab). The agency selected SpaceX for this job in September 2014.

Aerospace giant Boeing got a commercial crew contract back then as well, but has not yet flown an astronaut mission for NASA. That should change soon, however: The first astronaut flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled to launch in early May.

That mission, called Crew Flight Test, will send two astronauts to the ISS for a roughly 10-day stay.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

How to watch SpaceX's 3rd Starship launch test live online
News
By Robert Lea published about 8 hours ago
The third orbital test flight of the 400-foot-tall megarocket could launch at around 8 a.m. EDT.

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-t ... SmartBrief

SpaceX is set to perform the third orbital test of its Starship rocket on Thursday (March 14), and you can watch the event for free online.

Standing over 400 feet (122 meters) tall, this huge rocket consists of two parts. The first is a stainless steel, reusable upper stage that's known also as "Starship," and the second is a Super Heavy first-stage booster. Starship is currently the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Its ultimate aim is to help astronauts journey to the moon, and eventually Mars, as they embark on more sustained space missions and perhaps start creating settlements on the alien worlds.

SpaceX announced the launch on its X feed, saying its stream of Starship's third flight would begin on Thursday at 7:30 a.m EDT (1130 GMT). The company also said the stream would begin 30 minutes before launch, which suggests a tentative liftoff time of around 8 a.m EDT (1200 GMT). A livestream of the rocket's test will also be available to watch on Space.com's YouTube channel just here.

"The third flight test aims to build on what we've learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives, including the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starship's payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage’s coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship," SpaceX wrote on its Starship mission website. "It will also fly a new trajectory, with Starship targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. This new flight path enables us to attempt new techniques like in-space engine burns while maximizing public safety."

These objectives make this third flight of Starship more ambitious than the rocket's previous two flights.

If you can't see SpaceX's Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX's Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.

Note: Stock is low so you'll have to act quickly to get this.

VIEW DEAL
Starship flew its first mission from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas in April 2023. This launch ended after the rocket's two stages failed to separate, and it intentionally detonated just four minutes after blast-off.

The second flight of Starship in Nov. 2023 was marginally more successful, with the space vehicle achieving a nominal first-stage engine burn and its two stages separating on schedule. Around eight minutes after launch, however, the rocket exploded during a venting of liquid oxygen. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that this explosion wouldn't have happened if Starship had been carrying a payload on the second flight because, in that scenario, it wouldn't have been hauling liquid oxygen.

Prior to the third test flight of Starship, SpaceX performed a critical fueling test at its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas. During the test, over 10 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen were poured into the rocket.

"Starship Flight 3 is preparing for launch," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote in a post on X, along with accompanying photos of the fueling test.

PP

[Boac]

FAA Launch licence issued, planned for 12:00(Z)

[CharlieOneSix]

T-30 minutes....maybe....

[Archer]

Some pretty spectacular footage! Loved the shots from the coasting phase and the initial build-up of plasma during reentry.