The maiden flight of Spectrum ended in a spectacular explosion against the dramatic icy backdrop of Andøya Spaceport, Norway. Footage of Spectrum’s fiery explosion punctuating the remote wilderness of Andøya was quickly picked up by news outlets internationally. This...
A Kuiazhou 1A (KZ-1A) three-stage solid rocket was set to launch on 1 March at about 1001 GMT from Jiuquan, China. However, whether it made it off the pad intact was called into question after reports gained traction that KZ-1A suffered an explosive failure. An...
The Starship/Super Heavy suffered a serious launch failure during a suborbital flight test, for the second time in a row. Numerous observers in the Bahamas and at least one aircraft saw the Starship stage break up into fiery debris at nearly nine minutes after its...
SpaceX suffered a launch failure on the seventh test flight of Starship after an unexpected leak and the ensuing explosion led to its untimely end. Some commercial airlines were affected after concerns were raised about falling debris from the launch vehicle. SpaceX...
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...
