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The following is an update from SpaceX: "SpaceX is targeting Friday, August 18 at 12:30 a.m. PT (7:30 UTC) for a Falcon 9 launch of 21 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Weather permitting, this event could be visible to the unaided eye for hundreds of miles. Observers in dark locations may be able to see the rocket's tenuous exhaust plume. Rather than being visible due to being illuminated by sunlight at high altitude, the plume may be visible because it is generating its own light.

North Korea fired what it described as a “space satellite” toward the south on Wednesday, South Korea's military said, according to Reuters. Sirens were heard across Seoul around 6:32 a.m. local time, and the city issued a warning asking citizens to prepare for potential evacuation, the report said. The Japanese government issued an emergency warning over its J-Alert broadcasting system for residents of the southern prefecture of Okinawa, saying a missile had been launched from North Korea. The launch comes a day after North Korea confirmed it will launch a reconnaissance satellite in June. The North’s official KCNA news agency...

Japan put its ballistic missile defences on alert on Monday and vowed to shoot down any projectile that threatens its territory, after North Korea notified it of a planned satellite launch between May 31 and June 11. The nuclear-armed North says it has completed its first military spy satellite and leader Kim Jong Un has approved final preparations for the launch. It would be the North's latest step in a series of missile launches and weapons tests in recent months, including one of a new, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile. Tokyo expects North Korea to fire the rocket carrying its satellite...

Former President Trump on Monday welcomed Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to the 2024 Republican presidential primary, using Scott’s entry into the race to chide another rival: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). “Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican Presidential Primary Race,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable.” Trump noted that he and Scott worked together to establish opportunity zones, an investment incentive included in the 2017 tax cut legislation passed by Republicans and signed into...

Longish article. Several embedded videos. Good stuff. Excerpts below. “The latest incident to befall the U.S. Navy’s troubled Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was an embarrassingly public one, and one that left the brand-new USS Cleveland (LCS-31) damaged in the process of being launched, in front of around 3,000 people, including members of the media. The Navy has now issued a statement providing more details of the collision between the Cleveland — which is the last of the 16-strong Freedom class — and a tugboat involved during the warship’s recent christening.” “No personnel injuries occurred, but there was limited damage” to...

2:52 West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) will launch his U.S. Senate campaign next week in the Mountain State, according to an invitation first seen by Politico. Justice’s long-awaited campaign will launch on Thursday at an event at The Greenbrier, his luxury resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, according to the invitation. A Republican strategist close to Justice confirmed the details to Politico.

SpaceX is launching Starship – the world's most powerful rocket ever – on its first integrated flight test. The launch window opens at 7 am Central (12:00 UTC). The Booster 7 and Ship 24 Integrated Flight Test will liftoff from Starbase in Texas with a reentry and splashdown near Hawaii.

The Launch Readiness Review for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is complete and the mission has been given a ‘Go’ for launch. Liftoff is targeted for 1:45 a.m. EST Monday, February 27, from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft Endeavour, powered by the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, will carry NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev on a 25-hour trip to the space station. The crew will dock at approximately 2:38 a.m. EST on Tuesday, February 28,...

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Friday formally declassified an image then-US President Donald Trump tweeted in 2019 of a highly classified satellite photograph depicting the site of a failed Iranian rocket launch. NPR reported that the NGA declassified the image after a “grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public” in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the radio network. Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the US government's most prized intelligence on social media,...

Vice President Harris on Friday lashed out at North Korea after its most recent missile launch during an appearance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, calling the move a “brazen violation” of U.N. security resolutions. North Korea launched what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), according to multiple reports, a rocket with the potential to reach across continents, early on Friday.

The Falcon Heavy is now scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday to deliver two spacecraft payloads into geosynchronous orbit. According to launch details posted on the Kennedy Space Center’s website, the Falcon Heavy rocket aims to deploy the TETRA 1 microsatellite into orbit, along with the USSF-44 mission for the U.S. Space Force. Following ignition, the Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will land on landing zone 1 and landing zone 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station while the core stage will be expended. The spaceflight was initially rumored to take place on Monday, Oct. 31...

House Republican leaders on Thursday morning unveiled to GOP members at a conference meeting the party’s new “Commitment to America” agenda, a core group of policies that fit on a pocket card designed to help them and their candidates communicate the GOP’s vision effectively in the midterm elections. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and thirty or so of his colleagues will travel to the Pittsburgh area in Pennsylvania on Friday to formally roll out the vision to the American public, but members got a preview of it on Thursday morning in their conference meeting.

KYIV, Ukraine — Mykhail Podolyak barely flinched as air raid sirens wailed in Kyiv, signaling incoming Russian missiles. Sitting in his office at the heavily fortified presidential administration building in Ukraine’s capital, the adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the sirens have become a normal part of life six months into the war with Russia. “We’re getting used to this new lifestyle — we are used to the wailing sirens now and to the bombardments, because the Russian Federation is mostly aiming at the civilian population and civilian infrastructure,” he said in an...

Ticket sales for the Artemis 1 launch, which is targeted for Aug. 29, were so popular after opening Tuesday (Aug. 2) that the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's website was briefly overwhelmed, Florida Today reported(opens in new tab) late last week. A "quick fix" to the website, however, allowed the complex to sell out two of the three package deals within 2.5 hours of opening ticket sales, the report added. The news comes amid expectations that more than 100,000 people will show up on the Space Coast of Florida, which includes the Kennedy Space Center and the nearby Cape Canaveral...

This is a replay of the live stream. The upper stage engine shut down early, causing a mission failure. Launch window: 12:00 - 2:00 pm EDT (16:00 - 18:00 UTC) Launch site: SLC-46, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida Destination: Low Earth Orbit A commercial small satellite launch vehicle developed by Astra will launch the first pair of small CubeSats for NASA’s TROPICS mission. The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats, or TROPICS, mission will measure environmental and inner-core conditions for tropical cyclones. Delayed from April. Thanks to NASASpaceflight and Chris Bergin for...

Former President Donald Trump’s media company is planning on launching a new streaming service featuring “non-woke content.” According to a May 16 filing by Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the former president’s media company plans to launch a subscription-based streaming service called “TMTG+” that features “non-woke” content, aims to “cancel ‘cancel culture,’” and commits to not censoring content creators for their political ideology. “TMTG believes that there is a need for quality programming that does not lecture its viewers or only presents one ‘acceptable’ approach on a topic. Entertainers, comedians, and creators have frequently been agents for change in...

An unknown foreign military in southeast Asia has reportedly test launched an SLBM, or submarine-launched ballistic missile, which appears to have endangered a nearby commercial aircraft full of people. Stunning video taken from a Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 as it flew over the South China Sea just as the unidentified submarine launched the missile shows the airliner remarkably close. The Drive reports that it was likely a test of either the Chinese or South Korean military, but not even the precise date of the event has been confirmed at this point: Twitter user @jchovernut, a pilot for U.S.-based airline Allegiant...

SpaceX and NASA are targeting no earlier than Wednesday, April 27 for Falcon 9’s launch of Crew-4, Dragon’s fourth science expedition mission to the International Space Station, from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch is targeted for 3:52 a.m. ET (7:52 UTC), with a backup opportunity available on Thursday, April 28.

North Korea is preparing for its first nuclear bomb test in nearly five years, government sources in South Korea have told local media. Kim Jong Un's secretive regime appears to be hastily constructing a 'shortcut' to a tunnel at its nuclear test site in Punggye-ri in preparations for a seventh underground nuclear detonation, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on Sunday. Warnings of the nuclear test, which would be the first since September 17, come just days after the North test-fired its massive Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, which could deliver a warhead anywhere in the United States.

Unconfirmed for now, but this is now the second photo/video I've seen of a possible S-300/400 launch near #Mozyr, Belarus. Visible all across the Gomel region, it seems. What did it just intercept? https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1497957770074763264