David Todd explains what made one Falcon 9 launch stand out from the masses Falcon 9 rocket launches have become so frequent that the vast majority are barely mentioned by the press these days. So, what was different about a standard SpaceX Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5...
Although the 2024 calendar year proved to be a highly profitable one for space insurers, the industry continued to reel from a revised US$1.3 billion net loss for 2023. Of the losses in 2023, most were relatively small sub-US$30 million claims. It was a series of...
Of the 259 orbital launch attempts made in 2024 (four Starship launches were excluded because they were sub-orbital), eight failed to achieve their correct orbits. This gave a failure rate of 3 per cent – relatively low compared with the previous year when it was 6...
Europe’s small solid rocket, Vega C, has returned to flight for the first time in two years since it suffered a launch failure. The rocket took off from Kourou, French Guiana on 5 December at 2120 GMT. It carried the Sentinel 1C radar satellite, built by Thales...
Observed by Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump, the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Super Heavy/Starship combination lifted off at 2200 GMT on 19 November from Boca Chica, near Brownsville, Texas. Its primary aim was to enact a controlled splashdown in the...
