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The Zhuque-2 rocket lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Wednesday China said the rocket completed the flight mission. Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua via EPA-EFE July 12 (UPI) -- A methane-fueled rocket, launched by China, has reached orbit for the first time, beating out potential competitors from the United States and indicating a renewed effort by that nation to land astronauts on the moon with a more powerful spacecraft. Built by Landspace, a private Chinese company, the 164-foot Zhuque-2 rocket lifted off from its Jiuquan launch complex, in China's Inner Mongolia, on Wednesday morning local time, Chinese...

CAPSTONE entered into safe mode during the evening of Thursday, September 8, just as the probe was completing a trajectory correction maneuver. CAPSTONE’s mission team “has good knowledge of the state and status of the spacecraft,” NASA said in a painfully brief statement. “The mission operations team is in contact with the spacecraft and working towards a solution with support from the Deep Space Network. Additional updates will be provided as available.” No further updates have been provided since the statement was published on September 10. CAPSTONE, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, launched to space...

The CAPSTONE team is working to understand the problem and how to fix it. CAPSTONE in its halo-shaped lunar orbit. Artist's illustration of NASA's tiny CAPSTONE probe in its halo-shaped lunar orbit. CAPSTONE is scheduled to arrive at the moon on Nov. 13, 2022, but that future is in doubt; mission team members lost contact with the cubesat shortly after it began flying freely on July 4. (Image credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter) CAPSTONE has gone dark. The 55-pound (25 kilograms) NASA probe ceased communicating with its handlers yesterday (July 4), shortly after it deployed successfully from Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft bus...

VIDEO AT LINK................ Rocket Lab has successfully grabbed a rocket coming down from space with a helicopter. The impressive feat is a new way to make sure that rockets don’t end up in the ocean, on the ground, or simply burning up in the atmosphere. The launch was delayed by a few days and the rocket eventually took off from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula at 18:49 ET on May 2. To emphasize the company’s connection to the Southern Hemisphere country, the mission was named “There and Back Again” in homage to The Hobbit. The world imagined by Tolkien has now...

How does Blue Orgin continue to get government contracts while suing the government and publicly criticizing Artemis?ANGRY UPDATE!! Why is Blue Origin still getting government contracts? What about Artemis? | September 27, 2021 | The Angry Astronaut

The launches are scheduled from the first quarter of 2023 through 2024, with the option for a fourth mission. Each Photon will serve as a platform for Varda’s “space factories,” hardware the startup is developing to produce a range of products in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit. The Photons will provide propulsion and station-keeping, as well as attitude control and communications. Varda will develop the 120-kilogram factories, which include a return capsule that will reduce the manufactured products back to Earth at the end of a three-month mission. Varda raised a $42 million Series A round July 28,...

A camera mounted on the Electron's upper stage showed stage separation 2 minutes and 35 seconds into the flight, followed by what appeared to be a brief ignition and a sharp sideways motion before shutting down. Rocket Lab confirmed a loss of telemetry from the rocket four minutes after liftoff. Saturday's launch failure follows a failed launch in July 2020, which the company traced to a single faulty electrical connection. Rocket Lab's first Electron launch in 2017 failed to reach orbit due to a telemetry issue. Aside from those flights, Rocket Lab has seen 18 successful launches. Rocket Lab launched...

The company recovered the first stage of its two-stage Electron rocket for the first time on Thursday (Nov. 19), fishing the booster out of the Pacific Ocean a few hours after it had helped launch a 30-satellite mission aptly called "Return to Sender." The stage survived its trip back from space in great shape, helping to validate Rocket Lab's reusability vision, according to company founder and CEO Peter Beck. The 58-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to orbit, has been an expendable vehicle since its debut launch in 2017. Last year, however, Beck announced that the...

A detached electrical connector on the second stage of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket caused a failure on a July 4 mission that destroyed seven small commercial satellites, but the company said Friday it is on track to resume launching before the end of August. Once the electrical system disconnected in flight, it cut power from the rocket’s battery to the electric turbopumps on the Electron’s second stage Rutherford engine. That caused the engine to switch off prematurely around five-and-a-half minutes after the rocket took off from Rocket Lab’s launch base in New Zealand. The early engine shutdown prevented the rocket...

The Electron rocket lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 at Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand, at 5:19 p.m. Eastern. The launch was originally scheduled for July 3 but pushed back two days because of poor weather in the forecast, only for the company to move up the launch to July 4 based on a reassessment of the weather. The initial phases of the launch appeared to go as planned, although the vehicle’s passage through “max-q,” or maximum dynamic pressure, appeared to be rougher than what was seen in previous launches. Onboard video taken shortly before first-stage separation showed material...

In the next 24 hours, no less than three rockets — built by Rocket Lab, SpaceX and Interstellar Technologies — will launch from three different countries in a space age triple-header. But if you want to watch them all online, you're going to need to stay up late (or rise super early). The action will begin early Saturday (June 13) with the launch of a Rocket Lab Electron booster carrying five small satellites for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and the University of South Wales Canberra Space. Liftoff is scheduled for 12:43 a.m. EDT (0443 GMT) from Rocket Lab's...

Rocket Lab, SpaceX takes over Los Angeles, Putin surrenders to Elon Musk, DJT and the National Space Council, the FCC whines about Space Regulation, and Long March 5 failure announced...