Launch

China has stolen a march on the rest of the world by successfully launching the first space rocket powered by liquid methane and oxygen. The Suzaku-2 Yao booster successfully lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on July 12.

After 27 years and 117 missions, ESA's heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket has launched into retirement with the successful lift off of Flight VA261 on July 5, 2023 at 22:00 GMT from the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French Guiana.

ESA's Euclid mission to map the universe and learn more about dark energy and dark matter is on its way. On July 1, 2023 at 5:12 pm CEST the space telescope lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

After years of setbacks, Virgin Galactic has completed its first commercial flight, which saw it carry 13 research payloads and three passengers from the Italian Air Force and National Research Council of Italy to the edge of space.

Better known for building and flying lightweight small and medium orbital launchers, Rocket Lab is branching out. The company has announced the successful full launch of its HASTE rocket, which is designed to boost hypersonic vehicles well past Mach 5.

After Virgin Orbit vanished in bankruptcy court, Virgin Galactic announced its first spaceflight in two years as the Unity 25 mission rocketed to an altitude of 54.2 miles (87.2 km) on May 25, 2023 in the skies over Spaceport America, New Mexico.

Space launch company Virgin Orbit has been grounded for good after a US bankruptcy court broke it up and sold off its assets to bidders. The demise of the ambitious venture comes after a failed attempt to conduct its first mission in January.

Ahead of the start of the Atlantic hurricane season next month, two storm-monitoring NASA CubeSats have successfully launched into space atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula.

History was made today as a private company leapfrogged ahead of NASA by launching the largest, most powerful rocket ever. At 8:36 am CDT, SpaceX's uncrewed Starship lifted off from the company's Starbase in Texas on an orbital test flight.

ESA's historic mission to explore the moons of Jupiter and orbit the largest moon in the solar system, Ganymede, has begun. The Juice robotic probe lifted off from Europe's Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana atop an Ariane 5 rocket.

It was a glass half-full situation on March 22, 2023 as Relativity Space carried out the first successful launch of an almost entirely 3D-printed rocket from Launch Complex 16 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:23 pm EDT.

The mystery of why the first orbital mission launched from the UK fell into the sea on January 9 had some light shed on it today as Virgin Orbital announced that telemetry indicated that the second stage engine shut down prematurely.