SpaceX Falcon

Lockheed Martin is preparing to ship its newly completed Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft to Kennedy Space Center for its planned launch next month to map water deposits on the Moon.

“We are at an inflection point,” says Kelli Kedis Ogborn, vice president of Space Commerce and Entrepreneurship at the Space Foundation.

Ispace of Japan’s commercial “Resilience” lunar lander has completed its initial orbital maneuver, setting it on a course toward the Moon.

Two pioneering commercial lunar landers, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 and Japan's ispace's Resilience, successfully launched early Jan. 15.

Launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is planned for Jan. 15 at 1:11 a.m. EST.

The seventh and eighth O3b mPOWER satellites were launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 5:26 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Ispace says it is targeting another attempt to touch down a lunar lander on the Moon’s surface around four to five months after launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9.

The spacecraft was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:52 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander is due to launch mid-January onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and attempt a soft landing on the Moon about 60 days later.

Launched Oct. 14 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the $5.2 billion mission will perform a series of 49 flybys of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa beginning in 2031.

SpaceX knocked off a trio of Falcon 9 launches in less than 24 hr., ahead of a planned flight test of its Starship-Super Heavy vehicle Nov. 19.

As of midday on Nov. 14, Rocket Lab shares were trading at $17.77.

SES has launched six out of 13 planned O3b mPOWER satellites.

The Boeing subsidiary completed two identical satellites for NASA’s Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (Tracers) mission.

Liftoff from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A followed a Falcon 9 scrub Nov. 3 at the neighboring Cape Canaveral SFS Space Launch Complex 40.

SpaceX CRS-31 is scheduled to launch on the Falcon 9 rocket with the Cargo Dragon capsule from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 4 .

Landing of the Starship upper stage is targeted for early 2025.

SpaceX racked up its 97th and 98th flights of the year with a pair of Starlink deployment missions, surpassing 2023's record of 96.

The $5.2 billion mission is intended to continue its prime mission into June 2034, is to reach and enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030.

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

The European Space Agency plans to land two cubesats on a remote asteroid as it seeks to gather more data to inform its planetary defense mission.

The new mission, known as Hera, is a followup to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

The once-classified office, first publicly acknowledged in 1992, is close to operationalizing its new constellation.

ESA is still optimistic its Hera mission to survey the Dimorphos asteroid will launch Oct. 7 despite a technical glitch with a SpaceX Falcon 9 during a recent flight.

NASA’s Crew-9 Dragon Freedom capsule autonomously docked with the station, delivering a NASA astronaut and Russian cosmonaut for a five-month tour of duty.