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The photographers who flew on Aviation PhotoCrew‘s mission on April 2nd were treated to an exquisite surprise when Starfighter Aerospace‘s TF-104G unexpectedly appeared in their viewfinders, posing for a series of dramatic photographs. Starfighter Aerospace’s Chief Pilot, PierCarlo Chiacchi, took off from Cape Canaveral around 2:00 PM and rendezvoused with Aviation PhotoCrew’s Short SC.7 Skyvan. Aviation PhotoCrew had organized this photoshoot covertly to surprise its loyal photographer clients. Aviation photographer Ricardo von Puttkammer of Aviation Photojournal was on board the Skyvan to capture this rare and exhilarating moment. Since the appearance of the TF-104G was completely unexpected, it created an...

SpaceX and NASA are targeting no earlier than Friday, March 14 for Falcon 9's launch of Dragon’s 10th operational human spaceflight mission (Crew-10) to the International Space Station from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch is targeted for 7:03 p.m. ET, with a backup opportunity available on Saturday, March 15 at 6:41 p.m. ET.SpaceX's live webcast of this mission will begin about one hour and 20 minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.The Dragon spacecraft supporting...

CEDAR PARK, Texas - Among the starry nights of Central Texas this week is a little bit of home. A company out of Cedar Park launched a spacecraft on the SpaceX Falcon 9 on Wednesday. The launch from Cape Canaveral was a success. "The work is just getting started, and we've got an exciting mission in front of us, about sixty days in front of us, and we're digging in hard in all that work," said Scholtes.

SpaceX carried out back-to-back launches of Falcon 9 rockets carrying Starlink satellites into orbit early Saturday, just hours after U.S. officials lifted a temporary ban on the rocket fleet. The company first launched the Starlink 8-10 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 3:43 a.m. EDT, and quickly followed that just an hour later with another Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Together, the flights delivered 42 Starlink satellites, including 26 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit,

13 Arrested In Port Canaveral Security Breach Illegal Immigrants Allegedly Use Fake Ids To Get Badges Federal agents in Central Florida arrested 13 illegal immigrants for allegedly using fake IDs to gain access to highly sensitive and secure areas of Port Canaveral, according to Local 6 News. A 2-month long investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found that the men apparently used false social security numbers to get security badges. They then used the badges to gain access certain areas of Port Canaveral, according to authorities. "Did they have unlimted access? No, they did not," Florida Department of...

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - A man is sitting in the Brevard County jail mostly because won't say who he is, or what he was doing when he beached a boat north of Port Canaveral. He's been given the name "John Doe" after he gave several name that couldn't be verified. The man also couldn't prove he owned the boat and wouldn't tell authorities where he was going.

The growing Chinese 'gate crashers' trend is sparking espionage concerns The FBI and Department of Defense have reportedly tracked more than 100 incidents of Chinese nationals posing as tourists to attempt to breach U.S. military bases and other federal sites. Those responsible, dubbed "gate crashers," range from Chinese nationals detected crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico, to scuba divers caught swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket launch site in Florida, several U.S. officials recently told The Wall Street Journal. The growing trend represents a potential espionage threat, as authorities believe the Chinese government in...

Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning missions to far-off moons and planets. In October, a Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. The $5 billion mission is designed to find out if Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, can support life. But because Europa is constantly bombarded by intense radiation created by Jupiter’s magnetic field, the Clipper spacecraft can’t orbit the moon itself. Instead, it will slide into an eccentric orbit around Jupiter and gather data by repeatedly swinging by Europa—53 times in total—before...

A hub for rocketry research and development in its early days, the Cape served as a test center not just for spaceflight and research but also for the US missile development programs...and along the eastern coastline, the iconic “missile row” of Atlas and Titan launch complexes dominated the skyline. Many of the Cape’s launch facilities have long since fallen silent, but with newcomers Firefly and Relativity preparing for their first launches from Cape Canaveral, the sight of rockets lifting off along the “row” is about to return. The eight launch pads that made up the core of what is unofficially...

Explanation: Sixty years ago, near the dawn of the space age, NASA controllers "lit the candle" and sent Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. His cramped space capsule was dubbed Freedom 7. Broadcast live to a global television audience, the historic Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Florida at 9:34 a.m. Eastern Time on May 5, 1961. The flight of Freedom 7, the first space flight by an American, followed less than a month after the first human venture into space by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The 15 minute sub-orbital flight achieved...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA chief Charles Bolden has advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City: Pray. That's about all the United States - or anyone for that matter - could do at this point about unknown asteroids and meteors that may be on a collision course with Earth, Bolden told lawmakers at a U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday. An asteroid estimated to be have been about 55 feet in diameter exploded on February 15 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, generating shock waves that shattered windows and damaged buildings. More than...

BREVARD HISTORY: Last Naval Battle of American Revolution Fought Near Cape Canaveral March 10, 1783BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – On March 10, 1783, the last naval battle of the American Revolution was fought off Cape Canaveral, as Captains John Barry and John Green tried to deliver a shipload of Spanish silver to the Continental Congress. Barry, captain of the Alliance, the Continental Navy’s 36-gun sailing frigate, arrived in Martinique from France in January 1783 and found orders from Robert Morris of the Continental Congress to sail to Havana, Cuba to pick up 72,000 Spanish silver dollars that were to be used...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's seemingly unstoppable Mars rover Opportunity has been knocked out by a gigantic dust storm that is enveloping the red planet and blotting out the sun. Officials said Wednesday they're hopeful the rover will survive the storm, which already covers one-quarter of Mars and is expected to encircle the planet in another few days. It could be weeks or even months, though, until the sky clears enough for sunlight to reach the Martian surface and recharge Opportunity's batteries through its solar panels. For now, Mars' oldest working rover is stuck in the middle of the raging...

One month after its launch, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has sent back an initial test image that shows more than 200,000 stars in the southern sky. TESS’ image was taken by one of its cameras with a two-second exposure. The picture is centered on the constellation Centaurus, with the edge of the dark Coalsack Nebula at upper right and the star Beta Centauri prominent along the lower edge. The picture provides only a hint of what TESS will be seeing once it starts delivering science-quality images next month. When all four wide-field cameras are in operation, TESS’ images...

Explanation: On May 6, the after midnight launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up dark skies over Merritt Island, planet Earth. Its second stage bound for Earth orbit, the rocket's arc seems to be on course for the center of the Milky Way in this pleasing composite image looking toward the southeast. Two consecutive exposures made with camera fixed to a tripod were combined to follow rocket and home galaxy. A 3 minute long exposure at low sensitivity allowed the rocket's first stage burn to trace the bright orange arc and a 30 second exposure at high sensitivity...

(CNN)—NASA's rockets are astounding machines, capable of blasting into space at thousands of miles per hour and withstanding temperatures twice the melting point of steel. But they can't take off underwater. Rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps threaten to disrupt a handful of NASA launch sites along U.S. coastlines, the space agency warns. In the coming years, launch facilities at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and other places may need to be retrofitted or even moved inland, NASA says. "Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist...

Explanation: A new chapter in space flight began this week in 1950 July with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida: the Bumper V-2. Shown above, the Bumper V-2 was an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a WAC Corporal rocket. The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 400 kilometers, higher than even Space Shuttles once flew. Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, the Bumper V-2 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere. Bumper V-2 rockets carried small...

I got to witness the launch of Or1on EFT-1 (I know, it was a couple of days ago, but when you get up 2 days in a row at approx. 2 AM . . . ). We watched it from Space View Park. We met several folks who had paid to see it from "inside" the Cape, but they said this was a better view (and it was free, had restrooms, and was easy to exit after the launch). First, I want to congratulate Lockheed Martin. They built every manned launch except the Space Shuttle, and it's good to have...

The orbital airframe structure for the first commercial Dream Chaser mini-shuttle that will launch to Earth orbit just over two years from now has been unveiled by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and program partner Lockheed Martin. Sierra Nevada is moving forward with plans for Dream Chaser’s first launch and unmanned orbital test flight in November 2016 atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The winged Dream Chaser is being developed under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program aimed at restoring America’s indigenous human spaceflight access to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station (ISS).

CAPE CANAVERAL -- An Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying an Air Force satellite into orbit Tuesday afternoon, against a bright blue sky. The Space-Based Infrared System Geosynchronous (SBIRS GEO-2) satellite, numbered 2 because it will be the second of its kind, is designed to help the military spot incoming missiles. The GEO-1 satellite launched in May 2011. The SBIRS program addresses critical warfighter needs in the areas of missile warning, missile defense, technical intelligence and battlespace characterization.