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Seradata’s recommended space stories – December 2024
We are cutting through the orbital debris for you. In other words, we're keeping an eye on space news on the web so you don't have to. Here is our round-up of the most important, and interesting, space news stories of December (space orders can be found in another...
Satellite and launch orders in December 2024
Construction Orders As a follow-on to its Droid-01 testbed mission, Turion Space secured a US$32.6 million contract from the US military for three more space surveillance satellites Eutelsat ordered 100 partially upgraded OneWeb satellites from Airbus DS to...
Starship explodes mid-air on 7th test flight, but its Super Heavy booster manages ‘chopstick’ grab landing
SpaceX suffered a launch failure on the seventh test flight of Starship after an unexpected leak and the ensuing explosion led to its untimely end. Some commercial airlines were affected after concerns were raised about falling debris from the launch vehicle. SpaceX...
Two lunar rovers launched by SpaceX Falcon 9 will take very different routes to Moon
David Todd explains what made one Falcon 9 launch stand out from the masses Falcon 9 rocket launches have become so frequent that the vast majority are barely mentioned by the press these days. So, what was different about a standard SpaceX Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5...
Profitable 2024 for space insurers does not make up for dire 2023
Although the 2024 calendar year proved to be a highly profitable one for space insurers, the industry continued to reel from a revised US$1.3 billion net loss for 2023. Of the losses in 2023, most were relatively small sub-US$30 million claims. It was a series of...
2024 launch failure rate improves despite late losses
Of the 259 orbital launch attempts made in 2024 (four Starship launches were excluded because they were sub-orbital), eight failed to achieve their correct orbits. This gave a failure rate of 3 per cent – relatively low compared with the previous year when it was 6...
Vega C returns to flight after two-year hiatus
Europe’s small solid rocket, Vega C, has returned to flight for the first time in two years since it suffered a launch failure. The rocket took off from Kourou, French Guiana on 5 December at 2120 GMT. It carried the Sentinel 1C radar satellite, built by Thales...
Launches in December 2024
Satellite and launch orders in November 2024
Launch orders: NASA gives SpaceX US$257 million contract for Falcon Heavy launch of its nuclear-powered Dragonfly helicopter drone to Titan SEOPS buys SpaceX Falcon 9 launch for dedicated rideshare mission to GEO while also signing with Axient for in-orbit delivery...
Starship IFT-6 flight splashdown succeeds – but SpaceX aborts booster landing
Observed by Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump, the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Super Heavy/Starship combination lifted off at 2200 GMT on 19 November from Boca Chica, near Brownsville, Texas. Its primary aim was to enact a controlled splashdown in the...
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