Space

SpaceX launched a fully integrated Starship launch vehicle for the first time on Thursday morning, a long-awaited and highly anticipated milestone in the vehicle development program. The orbital test flight surpassed many expectations. The vehicle cleared Max Q – the point at which the most aerod

After much anticipation and a series of consultations and feedback from various stakeholders, India has finally released its much-awaited policy establishing guidelines and rules for the country’s space ecosystem. On Thursday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released the final v

SpaceX has launched its fully stacked version of Starship, including the upper stage and the Super Heavy booster, for the first time. The combined launch vehicle stands at nearly 400 feet tall, and the launch today included a successful lift-off, plus ascent all the way to and through the crucial M

SpaceX is launching its Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in southern Texas today — the first time it’s trying to fly the fully stacked version of the launch vehicle, which means Starship itself is set atop the Super Heavy booster that it requires to reach orbit.

"1681931131.400819" tabindex="0" role="listitem" aria-setsize="-1" data-qa="virtual-list-item" data-item-key="1681931131.400819"> Tomorrow's Starship orbital flight test may well go explosively wrong, and SpaceX's less than stellar coordination with officials responsible for overse

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! In this issue: Starship So long, Terran 1 Three brothers want to harvest water from the moon for propellant News from Stoke Space and more Starship I am writing this on Friday, so by the time you read this on Monday, Starship may have already taken to the skies. O

Orbit Fab, a company that wants to build a network of refueling stations in orbit, closed a $28.5 million Series A to launch more fuel delivery and infrastructure missions. The Colorado-based startup has developed a refueling port called the Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI), whic

SpaceX has just announced that today’s orbital flight test attempt of the Starship launch system will now be a wet dress rehearsal, due to a frozen pressure valve. That means countdown will conclude at T-10 seconds. The news came at around T-8 minutes and countdown. It will take at least 48 h

Rocket Lab is adding a new offering to its suite of services: hypersonic suborbital launches. The new service will be available starting sometime in the first half of this year, when the company will fly its first mission for a “confidential customer” who contracted use of the new subor

In a few short hours, SpaceX will attempt to fly its fully integrated Starship launch system for the first time from the company’s massive base on Texas’s southeastern coast. While SpaceX has conducted a number of suborbital tests of the Starship upper stage from its ba

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has issued a launch license to SpaceX for the Starship orbital flight test, which could now take place as soon as Monday. A 150-minute test window will open at 7:00 a.m. local time (CST), SpaceX said on its website. The long-awaited launch license came at th

U.K.-based small launch developer Orbex is undergoing a change in leadership. The company's co-founder and (now former) CEO Chris Larmour said on LinkedIn that he will no longer be leading the startup as it races to its first launch sometime this year. His LinkedIn post suggests

A company with a spacecraft en route to the moon, ispace is now trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Japanese firm raised around $52 million (¥6.7 billion) in an initial public offering last month. Shares reportedly went untraded on the first listing day due to a large volume of buy orders and

Toronto-based startup Kepler Communications closed another tranche of capital to continue building out its on-orbit data network. The new funding, which comes to $92 million, will be used to launch a constellation of optical communications satellites next year. Those satellites will join Kepler'