Following a radiator leak on 15 December, Roscosmos, in agreement with NASA and other International Space Station (ISS) partners, has decided that the Soyuz MS-22 will not return to Earth with humans on it, unless there is an extreme emergency. A radiator leak on...
After a series of launch aborts and technical delays, ABL Space Systems perhaps had its own portents of doom when it decided not to live-webcast the maiden launch of its two-stage LOX (liquid oxygen)/kerosene powered RS-1 rocket. Instead, the US rocket maker and...
In yet another act of altruism, albeit a revenue earning example, SpaceX used its Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5 rocket to launch 40 OneWeb satellites for its Starlink communicaitons constellation competitor OneWeb on the same day that its own Starlink launch was delayed (a...
With much fanfare, the first ever orbital launch attempt from UK soil began with the lift-off from Newquay Airport’s horizontal spaceport facility of Boeing 747-400 “Cosmic Girl”. Beneath the wing of the carrier aircraft was the Virgin Orbit LauncherOne. Cosmic Girl...
China opened its launch account for 2023 with a pair of orbital launches. At 2200 GMT on 8 January 2022, China launched a Long March 7A (CZ-7A) rocket from its Southern launch site, Wenchang, Hainan Island. It carried the Shi Jian 23 communications test satellite. The...
During 2022 there were 186 orbital launch attempts. This beat 2021’s record-breaking total of 146 launches (the previous record was in 1967 with 139 launches). Thanks to the 61 launches made by SpaceX’s Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy family, the US retook the lead with 78,...
