It is a time of renewal at the International Space Station as one long-standing module is removed to be replaced by another. At 1055 GMT, on 26 July, the Progress MS-16 cargo spacecraft removed the Pirs airlock module from the station in preparation for a de-orbit...
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is back online after a month of downtime due to a malfunctioning payload computer. The veteran telescope, launched to low Earth orbit in 1990, was brought back into service on 17 July when controllers switched over to a backup...
As planned, Blue Origin’s New Shepard made its first crewed launch on 20 July, the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11’s lunar landing. According to the company, Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen “officially became astronauts when they passed the Kármán...
The newest ISS module, known as Nauka, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, by a Proton M at 1458 GMT on 21 July. The Proton rocket flying for the first time in almost a year utilised a 3-stage configuration as opposed to the more familiar 4-stage...
On 11 July, Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson fulfilled a boyhood dream when he flew as ‘Astronaut 001” on his company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital tourism vehicle, VSS Unity. He described it as “the experience of a lifetime” and “just magical”. The Unity 22...
China successfully launched a Long March 3C/E (CZ-3C/E) rocket carrying the Tianlian 1E satellite into GTO at 1553 GMT on 6 July. The mission was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, China. Tianlian 1E will be used to provide data relay communications...
