Rockets, satellites, deep-space missions, and the new space economy taking off.
63 articles
SpaceX completed its 100th Falcon 9 mission of 2026 on August 22, lifting 27 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg. The same day, President Trump signed a new national space policy directing NASA and the Department of Commerce to enable 1,000 U.S. rocket launches annually by 2030.
SpaceX's Starlink Group 10-39 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral on August 21, completing the company's 100th mission of 2026. The cadence keeps SpaceX on pace to set a new annual launch record and consolidates its position as the operational backbone of low-Earth-orbit broadband.
NASA is targeting no earlier than August 30 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center. Roman will offer a field of view more than 100 times Hubble's and is expected to survey dark energy, exoplanets, and galaxy evolution at survey-scale speed.
SpaceX launched Starlink Group 17-50 from Vandenberg Space Force Base on August 18, carrying 24 Starlink satellites to LEO and bringing the megaconstellation total past 11,000. The mission was the company's 100th of 2026, the third consecutive year over the century mark, and booster B1097's 12th flight landed on droneship Of Course I Still Love You for the 651st Falcon booster recovery.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted Globalstar satellites from Cape Canaveral on August 15, delivering sonic booms across central Florida and pushing the 2026 Space Coast launch count to 52. NASA confirmed two weeks later that the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will launch from the same complex on August 30.
SpaceX confirmed Starship Flight 14, a V3 test mission from Starbase Pad 2, is targeting September 30, 2026, while the company logged back-to-back Falcon 9 launches on August 15 — extending a record cadence that puts the company on pace for 170 orbital launches this year.
SpaceX is targeting an August 15 liftoff of the classified USSF-366 mission from Vandenberg, with a Falcon 9 first stage flying for the 18th time before attempting a droneship landing in the Pacific.
Astranis revealed its Preceptor spacecraft on August 13 — a geostationary satellite designed to inspect, track and maneuver around other satellites in the crowded geostationary belt.
The U.S. Space Force awarded $60 million to five companies — Amazon LEO for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and York Space Systems — to test how commercial satellites connect to its Space Data Network.
Two Falcon 9 launches 13 hours apart — 29 from Florida and 24 from California — pushed the constellation past 10,900 operational satellites and marked SpaceX's 94th flight of the year, with West Coast cadence now running about one launch every 4.5 days.
One of only 13 people to launch on three different spacecraft, Fincke piloted the Crew-11 mission and commanded Expedition 74 — capping a career that included nine spacewalks totaling 48 hours and 37 minutes.
The satellite separated from the H3 rocket No. 9 as planned Tuesday, moving Japan's positioning system one step closer to full seven-satellite coverage and marking the rocket's recovery from December's failure.
SpaceX completed its 92nd launch of 2026 on August 9 and aimed for its 96th the next day from Cape Canaveral — Starlink 10-19, the 676th Falcon 9 flight — as the constellation passed 10,900 active satellites.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — a flagship observatory with a 2.4-meter mirror and a field of view 100 times wider than Hubble's — is set to launch on August 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, nine months ahead of schedule, Forbes reported.
The medium-lift rocket broke apart less than 90 seconds into its flight from Wenchang on Sunday night, destroying the ChinaSat-4B communications satellite in the vehicle's first failure since its maiden flight in March 2020.
An Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand at 5:18 a.m. ET on August 6, deploying the QPS-SAR-13 radar-imaging satellite into a 575-kilometer orbit, with 10 more iQPS launches under contract.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess as the third Chief of Space Operations on August 6, installing the service's deputy chief for operations to lead the six-year-old Space Force as it pursues sharp expansion in funding, personnel and missile warning missions.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted three next-generation BlueBird direct-to-cell satellites from Cape Canaveral on August 5, bringing AST SpaceMobile's constellation to 13 satellites as it targets beta services later this year.
A defunct Falcon 9 upper stage weighing about 9,000 pounds slammed into the lunar surface, with a Chinese satellite capturing video of the collision. Astronomers say the crash created a new impact site near the far side's Einstein crater.
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg on August 4 carrying 24 Starlink satellites — the 90th Falcon 9 flight of the year and the 70th Starlink mission. The booster B1063 landed for its 34th time, two flights shy of the reuse record.
In its first quarterly earnings since going public, SpaceX reported $7.8 billion in second-quarter sales, up 92% year over year, with nearly $2 billion coming from its AI cloud division.