Rocket

Texan startup Firefly Aerospace has joined the growing group of orbit-capable space startups, with the successful launch of its Alpha rocket over the weekend, which saw a set of satellites deployed into low-Earth orbit.

Rocket Lab captured one of its rockets for the first time in May, and has since been busy refurbishing it and working towards another notable milestone, proving it can work again just like a brand new one.

Today's planned launch of the Artemis 1 mission, which incorporates NASA's most powerful rocket ever, has been cancelled. According to NASA, there was a problem with the engines which couldn't be fixed within the two-hour launch window.

Northrop Grumman announces that the war in Ukraine is forcing it to develop a US-designed and manufactured replacement for the first stage of its Antares rocket, which was previously made in Ukraine using Russian engines.

Orbex has publicly unveiled the full-scale prototype of its reusable Prime rocket on its pad at Space Hub Sutherland in northern Scotland, where the first-ever vertical launch of a satellite from UK soil is set to be carried out in the coming months.

Rocket Lab has taken an important step forward in its efforts to recover its boosters for re-flight, today capturing its Electron first stage with a helicopter as it hurtled back toward Earth for the first time.

Rocket Lab has some bold rocket reusability aspirations, and all going to plan will soon achieve a key milestone by collecting the first stage of its Electron booster in midair with a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter.

The US Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Force Office of Scientific Research are planning to live-stream a rocket launch in Virginia tonight, running hypersonic tests on the Bolt II flight system at speeds up to Mach 6.

In an initiative that could lead to carbon-free – and possibly cheaper – space launches, scientists at the UC Riverside are experimenting with ammonia borane as a substitute to conventional carbon-based chemical rocket fuels.

It turns out the rocket that is predicted to impact the Moon on March 4 is not the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket after all, but the upper stage of a Chinese Long March 3C used to launch the Chang'e 5-T1 lunar flyby mission in 2014.

Described by his PR team as "like Russia's Elon Musk," serial entrepreneur Mikhail Korkorich says his new company Destinus is building a hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions, transcontinental cargo drone capable of hypersonic Mach 15 cruise speeds.

Rocket Lab has unveiled its concept for a new reusable launch vehicle called Neutron. Looking like something a Bond villain would deploy, it carries its second stage inside a permanently attached captive “Hungry Hippo” fairing design.