Space

After finding the Elon Musk-owned Starlink’s terminals on the roof of the General Services Administration — which a law professor quoted by The Associated Press called a “choke point for all agencies” — federal staffers had concerns.

Through the lens of the war between Ukraine and Russia, The Wall Street Journal writes about Europe’s need to replace Starlink, with one quote neatly summing up why:

Trump’s pick to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, found it strangely difficult to tell his Senate confirmation hearing whether Elon Musk was part of his job interview or not. That’s odd, because he must have met Musk — Isaacman funded, and flew on, two private spaceflights using Musk’s SpaceX craft.

A ULA Atlas V rocket carrying the first of 80 or so batches of satellites for Amazon’s Starlink competitor was scheduled for a launch attempt tonight, with the window opening between 7PM and 9PM ET. Bad weather, however, has forced a delay. Launch partner United Launch Alliance will provide a new window when approved.

SpaceX has launched over 7,000 low earth satellites that have disrupted astronomical observations. Another 70,000 LEO satellites are expected to launch before 2031 from SpaceX and its competitors including three 10,000 mega-constellations originating from China. Scientific American explores how astronomers are dealing with the challenge and planning for the future.

Drone footage provided by Isar Aerospace (a startup incubated as part of the Bavaria One space program) shows the first test flight of its Spectrum orbital vehicle in Norway. The flight termination system was triggered before it attempted a first-stage separation, and the rocket fell into the sea, though Isar called it a success and said it has more vehicles in production.

On April 14th, the pop star will join Jeff Bezos’ fiancé Lauren Sanchez and CBS host Gayle King aboard the New Shepard rocket as part of Blue Origin’s first all-female flight. The rocket will lift off from Launch Site One in West Texas, with a launch window opening at 9:30AM ET.

Right on schedule, the Dragon capsule deployed its parachutes and landed off the coast of Florida as recovery crews began the process of bringing the capsule onboard a recovery ship and extracting its crew.

The Dragon spacecraft is fewer than 20 minutes out from splashdown in Florida. As noted on NASA’s livestream, it has completed the deorbit burn that lasted about seven and a half minutes at 5:18PM ET, and is entering a period of communications blackout as they reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

Last night, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, along with Crew-9 members Aleksandr Gorbunov and Nick Hague, left the ISS in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft now that the Crew-10 mission has arrived to relieve them. NASA will resume coverage of their return mission this afternoon, as they are expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57PM ET, ending a voyage that started last June.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will soon return to Earth — following an unexpectedly long stay in space due to issues with Boeing’s Starliner craft — after the Crew-10 mission’s SpaceX Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station early this morning.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on schedule in its second attempt Friday night, sending the Crew-10 mission on its way to the International Space Station.

Time for the second launch attempt of Crew-10.

Commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, pilot, along with mission specialists Takuya Onishi and Kirill Peskov are back in the Dragon spacecraft, ahead of the mission’s launch, which is scheduled for 7:03PM ET.

Now that SpaceX ground teams have “successfully flushed a suspected pocket of trapped air” in the ground support hydraulics system used for the clamp arm supporting the Falcon 9 rocket, there will be another attempt to launch the Crew-10 mission to the ISS tonight, after the first one on Wednesday was scrubbed.

With less than an hour to go on the countdown, NASA announced tonight’s launch attempt to send a capsule to the ISS on a Falcon 9 rocket is off. There is a backup lunch opportunity already scheduled for tomorrow night, on March 13th at 7:26PM ET, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.

The latest update about the status of the Crew-10 launch scheduled for 7:48PM ET shows the view from inside the capsule as the hatch door closed.

The agency is axing the Office of the Chief Scientist and the the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy.