When you compare SpaceX to the world's other space enterprises, it's probably easier to list the things SpaceX hasn't done instead of reciting all of the company's achievements.

One of these is the launch of nuclear materials. SpaceX has launched a handful of planetary science missions for NASA, but these spacecraft have all used solar arrays to generate electricity. In this century, NASA's probes relying on nuclear power have all flown on rockets built by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

This is about to change with a $256.6 million contract NASA awarded to SpaceX on Monday. The contract covers launch services and related costs for SpaceX to launch Dragonfly, a rotorcraft designed to explore the alien environment of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

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The Space Launch System rocket that will dispatch four astronauts on the first Moon mission in more than 50 years passed a major milestone Wednesday.

NASA said ground teams inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida lifted the aft assembly of the rocket's left booster onto the mobile launch platform. Using an overhead crane, teams hoisted the left aft booster assembly—already filled with pre-packed solid propellant—from the VAB transfer aisle, over a catwalk dozens of stories high and then down onto mounting posts on the mobile launcher.

This marks the start of stacking for the second SLS rocket earmarked to launch NASA's Artemis II mission and slated to send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the far side of the Moon. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of NASA's Artemis program and the first time people fly on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft.

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SpaceX launched its sixth Starship rocket Tuesday, proving for the first time that the stainless steel ship can maneuver in space and paving the way for an even larger, upgraded vehicle slated to debut on the next test flight.

The only hiccup was an abortive attempt to catch the rocket's Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in South Texas, something SpaceX achieved on the previous flight on October 13. The Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world, reaching an altitude of 118 miles (190 kilometers) before plunging through the atmosphere for a pinpoint slow-speed splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The sixth flight of the world's largest launcher—standing 398 feet (121.3 meters) tall—began with a lumbering liftoff from SpaceX's Starbase facility near the US-Mexico border at 4 pm CST (22:00 UTC) Tuesday. The rocket headed east over the Gulf of Mexico, propelled by 33 Raptor engines clustered on the bottom of its Super Heavy first stage.

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Officials from NASA and Russia’s space agency don’t see eye to eye on the causes and risks of small but persistent air leaks on the International Space Station.

That was the word from the new chair of NASA's International Space Station Advisory Committee last week. The air leaks are located in the transfer tunnel of the space station's Russian Zvezda service module, one of the oldest elements of the complex.

US and Russian officials "don't have a common understanding of what the likely root cause is, or the severity of the consequences of these leaks," said Bob Cabana, a retired NASA astronaut who took the helm of the advisory committee earlier this year. Cabana replaced former Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford, who chaired the committee before he died in March.

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The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth.

In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an unspecified "medical issue" after splashdown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that concluded the 235-day mission. After an overnight stay in a hospital in Florida, NASA said the astronaut was released "in good health" and returned to their home base in Houston to resume normal post-flight activities.

The space agency did not identify the astronaut or any details about their condition, citing medical privacy concerns. The three NASA astronauts on the Dragon spacecraft included commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin accompanied the three NASA crew members. Russia's space agency confirmed he was not hospitalized after returning to Earth.

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From its halo-like orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope is seeing farther than human eyes have ever seen.

In May, astronomers announced that Webb detected the most distant galaxy found so far, a fuzzy blob of red light that we see as it existed just 290 million years after the Big Bang. Light from this galaxy, several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun, traveled more than 13 billion years until photons fell onto Webb's gold-coated mirror.

A few months later, in July, scientists released an image Webb captured of a planet circling a star slightly cooler than the Sun nearly 12 light-years from Earth. The alien world is several times the mass of Jupiter and the closest exoplanet to ever be directly imaged. One of Webb's science instruments has a coronagraph to blot out bright starlight, allowing the telescope to resolve the faint signature of a nearby planet and use spectroscopy to measure its chemical composition.

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For those who follow NASA's human spaceflight program, when the Orion spacecraft's heat shield cracked and chipped away during atmospheric reentry on the unpiloted Artemis I test flight in late 2022, what caused it became a burning question.

Multiple NASA officials said Monday they now know the answer, but they're not telling. Instead, agency officials want to wait until more reviews are done to determine what this means for Artemis II, the Orion spacecraft's first crew mission around the Moon, officially scheduled for launch in September 2025.

"We have gotten to a root cause," said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator for NASA's Moon to Mars program office, in response to a question from Ars on Monday at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

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For his most recent trip to the International Space Station, in lieu of bringing coffee or some other beverage in his "personal drink bag" allotment for the stay, NASA astronaut Don Pettit asked instead for a couple of bags of unflavored gelatin.

This was not for cooking purposes but rather to perform scientific experiments. How many of us would give up coffee for science?

Well, Donald Roy Pettit is not like most of us.

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NASA said Saturday that an astronaut who was hospitalized after returning from space the day before has been released and is in "good health." The agency did not provide any more details on the matter, citing medical privacy protections.

The astronaut was one of four crew members who returned from a 235-day mission in low-Earth orbit with a predawn splashdown Friday. The four-person crew splashed down inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft at 3:29 am EDT (07:29 UTC) in the Gulf of Mexico south of Pensacola, Florida.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were inside SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft for reentry and splashdown. NASA said one of its astronauts "experienced a medical issue" after the splashdown, and all four crew members were flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola for medical evaluation.

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Sometimes, it's worth noting when something goes unsaid.

On Wednesday, Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, participated in his first quarterly conference call with investment analysts. Under fire from labor groups and regulators, Boeing logged a nearly $6.2 billion loss for the last three months, while the new boss pledged a turnaround for the troubled aerospace company.

What Ortberg didn't mention in the call was the Starliner program. Starliner is a relatively small portion of Boeing's overall business, but it's a high-profile and unprofitable one.

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NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft lifted off Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, kicking off a $5.2 billion robotic mission to explore one of the most promising locations in the Solar System for finding extraterrestrial life.

The Falcon Heavy rocket fired its 27 kerosene-fueled engines and vaulted away from Launch Complex 39A at 12:06 pm EDT (16:06 UTC) Monday. Delayed several days due to Hurricane Milton, which passed through Central Florida late last week, the launch of Europa Clipper signaled the start of a five-and-a-half- year journey to Jupiter, where the spacecraft will settle into an orbit taking it repeatedly by one of the giant planet's numerous moons.

The moon of Jupiter that has most captured scientists' interest, Europa, is sheathed in ice. There's strong evidence of a global ocean of liquid water below Europa's frozen crust, and Europa Clipper is going there to determine if it has the ingredients for life.

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BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—SpaceX accomplished a groundbreaking engineering feat Sunday when it launched the fifth test flight of its gigantic Starship rocket and then caught the booster back at the launch pad in Texas with mechanical arms seven minutes later.

This achievement is the first of its kind, and it's crucial for SpaceX's vision of rapidly reusing the Starship rocket, enabling human expeditions to the Moon and Mars, routine access to space for mind-bogglingly massive payloads, and novel capabilities that no other company—or country—seems close to attaining.

The test flight began with a thundering liftoff of the 398-foot-tall (121.3-meter) Starship rocket at 7:25 am CDT (12:25 UTC) from SpaceX's Starbase launch site in South Texas, a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. The rocket's Super Heavy booster stage fired 33 Raptor engines, generating nearly 17 million pounds of thrust and gulping 20 tons of methane and liquid oxygen propellants per second at full throttle.

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I really hate to be the bearer of such bad news, but you and I will not live forever, dear reader.

We may hope to draw breath for a few decades yet, perhaps. But that's not long enough to descry any worlds circling other stars in a meaningful way. Those mysterious orbs are too distant, both in space and time; the vastness of this galaxy is too great, the beat of a human life too short against the slow rhythm of cosmic time. We space enjoyers must therefore be content with what lies in our backyard.

If you are of a certain age, say half a century old or less, you may feel as though you missed the golden age of space exploration, when humanity first walked into that backyard. The Baby Boomers, who were born in time to not only see what the lunar surface looked like but to watch humans walk upon it in real time, were truly lucky.

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SpaceX is investigating a problem with the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage that caused it to reenter the atmosphere and fall into the sea outside of its intended disposal area after a Saturday launch with a two-man crew heading to the International Space Station.

The upper stage malfunction apparently occurred after the Falcon 9 successfully deployed SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission. Hague and Gorbunov safely arrived at the space station Sunday to begin a five-month stay at the orbiting research complex.

The Falcon 9's second stage Merlin vacuum engine fired for more than six minutes to place the Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The engine was supposed to reignite later to steer the upper stage on a trajectory back into Earth's atmosphere for disposal over the South Pacific Ocean, ensuring the rocket doesn't remain in orbit as a piece of space junk.

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NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov lifted off Saturday from Florida's Space Coast aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, heading for a five-month expedition on the International Space Station.

The two-man crew launched on top of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket at 1:17 pm EDT (17:17 UTC), taking advantage of a break in the stormy weather to begin their climb to space. Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines powered the first stage of the flight on a trajectory northeast from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then the booster detached and returned to landing at Cape Canaveral as the Falcon 9's upper stage accelerated SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft into orbit.

"It was a sweet ride," Hague said after arriving in space. With a seemingly flawless launch, Hague and Gorbunov are on track to arrive at the space station around 5:30 pm EDT (2130 UTC) Sunday.

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SpaceX is investigating a problem with the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage that caused it to reenter the atmosphere and fall into the sea outside of its intended disposal area after a Saturday launch with a two-man crew heading to the International Space Station.

The upper stage malfunction apparently occurred after the Falcon 9 successfully deployed SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission. Hague and Gorbunov safely arrived at the space station Sunday to begin a five-month stay at the orbiting research complex.

The Falcon 9's second stage Merlin vacuum engine fired for more than six minutes to place the Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The engine was supposed to reignite later to steer the upper stage on a trajectory back into Earth's atmosphere for disposal over the South Pacific Ocean, ensuring the rocket doesn't remain in orbit as a piece of space junk.

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NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov lifted off Saturday from Florida's Space Coast aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, heading for a five-month expedition on the International Space Station.

The two-man crew launched on top of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket at 1:17 pm EDT (17:17 UTC), taking advantage of a break in the stormy weather to begin their climb to space. Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines powered the first stage of the flight on a trajectory northeast from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then the booster detached and returned to landing at Cape Canaveral as the Falcon 9's upper stage accelerated SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft into orbit.

"It was a sweet ride," Hague said after arriving in space. With a seemingly flawless launch, Hague and Gorbunov are on track to arrive at the space station around 5:30 pm EDT (2130 UTC) Sunday.

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US space officials do not like to talk about the perils of flying astronauts on the aging International Space Station, elements of which are now more than a quarter of a century old.

However, a new report confirms that NASA managers responsible for operating the space station are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station, essentially a tunnel that connects a larger module to a docking port, which is leaking.

Russian and US officials have known that this small PrK module, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module, has been leaking since September 2019. A new report, published Thursday by NASA's inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem.

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Enlarge / The first stage of ULA's second Vulcan rocket was raised onto its launch platform August 11 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

United Launch Alliance is free to compete for NASA contracts with its new Vulcan rocket after a successful test flight earlier this year, ending a period where SpaceX was the only company competing for rights to launch the agency's large science missions.

For several years, ULA was unable to bid for NASA launch contracts after the company sold all of its remaining Atlas V rockets to other customers, primarily for Amazon's Project Kuiper Internet network. ULA could not submit its new Vulcan rocket, which will replace the Atlas V, for NASA to consider in future launch contracts until the Vulcan completed at least one successful flight, according to Tim Dunn, senior launch director at NASA's Launch Services Program.

The Vulcan rocket's first certification flight on January 8, called Cert-1, was nearly flawless, demonstrating the launcher's methane-fueled BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin and an uprated twin-engine Centaur upper stage. A second test flight, known as Cert-2, is scheduled to lift off no earlier than October 4 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Assuming the upcoming launch is as successful as the first one, the US Space Force aims to launch its first mission on a Vulcan rocket by the end of the year.

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