India has become the first nation ever to land a spacecraft near the South Pole of the Moon, as well as only the fourth nation in the world to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. After a 19-minute descent from...
A Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat M rocket sent Russia’s Luna 25 lander, also known as the Luna-Glob, into orbit from Vostochny cosmodrome in far eastern Russia, at 2310 GMT on 10 August. The lander and the Fregat M stage were placed into an initial parking orbit of 280 x 267 km at...
A Long March 4C (CZ-4C) rocket successfully launched the 2.8 metric ton Feng Yun-3F (sometimes written as Fengyun-3F) meteorological satellite into an 828 km sun-synchronous orbit from Jiuquan at 0347 GMT on 3 August 2023. The launch on behalf of the China State...
While Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTR) concepts (e.g. the NERVA project) have been considered for space missions since the 1960s, their lack of suitable application combined with their technical risk has held back their actual use – until now. Seeing that a...
An LVM3-2 (GSLV 3-2) rocket successfully launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission from the Sriharikota (Satish Dhawan Space Centre), India, at 0905 GMT on 14 July. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) mission consisted of a propulsion module, lunar lander and lunar...
Commercial space station operator Vast has signed a contract with SpaceX for the launches of its first space station and a crew mission (announced on 10 May). A Falcon 9 will launch the space station module called Haven-1 in the late summer of 2025. A second launch...
