Tag Archives: Private Spaceflight

SpaceX is ready for the seventh test flight of Starship — the gargantuan rocket that Elon Musk, the company’s founder, says will take people to Mars someday. Over the first six test flights, SpaceX has demonstrated that it can launch the largest rocket ever into space and more or less bring the pieces back to Earth intact. Over the coming …

On Thursday morning, at a time when most people in the United States were sleeping, Jeff Bezos’ space company sent its first rocket into orbit. At 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket, …

On Thursday morning, at a time when most people in the United States were sleeping, Jeff Bezos’ space company sent its first rocket into orbit. At 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket, …

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is poised upright at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Preparations began in earnest several hours before launch when liquid hydrogen started flowing into New Glenn’s propellant tanks. At 10 minutes before liftoff time, the launch director will conduct a “go poll,” asking people whether the rocket’s systems are ready …

For years, the World Monuments Fund has sought to draw attention and resources to endangered cultural heritage sites including Machu Picchu in Peru, temples in Cambodia and the old city of Taiz in Yemen. But this year’s list of at-risk sites goes much further afield: to the moon. “The moon seems so far outside of our scope,” said Bénédicte de …

Updated  Jan. 12, 2025, 11:19 p.m. ET Kenneth Chang Kenneth Chang is reporting on the launch from Cocoa Beach, Fla. There’s a new rocket that’s never flown waiting on a launchpad in Florida. It’s called New Glenn. On Monday, the vehicle’s seven powerful engines are set to ignite, lifting it to orbit for the first time. There’s a lot on …

The foundational building block for Jeff Bezos’ space dreams is finally ready to launch. A New Glenn rocket — built by Blue Origin, the rocket company that Mr. Bezos started nearly a quarter century ago — is sitting on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It is as tall as a 32-story building, and its voluminous …

NASA needs help fetching rocks from Mars, and on Tuesday, agency officials announced that they have not yet quite decided how to do that. Instead, they are leaving a final decision to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump. But the officials said they had figured out how to potentially launch the mission and bring those red planet rocks …