Tag: mark

Rocket Lab called off the planned launch and recovery of an Electron booster Friday, preferring to wait for better wind and cloud cover conditions a few days from now. The next opportunity to launch the mission from New Zealand is Monday.

NASA restarted a two-day dress-rehearsal countdown Tuesday for the agency's new Space Launch System moon rocket after a series of unrelated glitches, mostly involving ground systems, blocked two earlier attempts to fully fuel the huge launcher to verify its readiness for flight.

Rocket Lab plans the first attempt to catch one of its returning small satellite boosters by helicopter after a launch later this month, nearly three years after the company announced its mid-air recovery and reuse concept.

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the International Space Station on Saturday with four private astronauts, beginning a planned stay of at least eight days -- and maybe longer -- while becoming the first mission with an all-commercial crew to visit the orbiting research complex.

Strapped in the seats of a SpaceX crew capsule, a retired NASA astronaut and three wealthy paying passengers rocketed into orbit Friday from the Kennedy Space Center on the first fully commercial mission to the International Space Station.

Four private citizens are gearing up to ride into orbit Friday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, taking aim on the International Space Station on the first all-commercial mission to visit the research complex. Liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is set for 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT).

SpaceX and a Houston company are gearing up to launch four private citizens Friday on the first NASA-sanctioned, fully commercial flight to the International Space Station, a key step in a government push to encourage private-sector development on the high frontier.

SpaceX rolled a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule to their launch pad Tuesday and test-fired the booster's engines Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center, setting up for launch Friday of four private space fliers on a 10-day mission to the International Space Station.

NASA officials said Tuesday they are standing down from a cryogenic loading test on the agency's Space Launch System moon rocket until after the launch of a commercial crew mission from a neighboring pad at the Kennedy Space Center. A countdown test Monday was delayed by what NASA managers characterized as minor issues, including a liquid oxygen temperature concern and a manual valve that was left in the wrong configuration before teams evacuated the SLS launch pad.

The launch of the first all-private crew to the International Space Station has been delayed to Friday, officials announced late Monday. The four commercial space fliers will ride to the station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA launch controllers called off plans to load super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the first fully-assembled Space Launch System moon rocket Sunday for a countdown dress rehearsal, giving time for ground teams to troubleshoot problems with fans used to ventilate the giant rocket's mobile launch structure at the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei joined two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth Wednesday, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a U.S.-record 355-day stay in space.