Rocket
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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.
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Aerospace startup Polaris Raumflugzeuge has been awarded a contract by the German government to develop and fly a revolutionary Linear AeroSpike (LAS) engine that replaces the conventional rocket nozzle with curving wall-shaped plug.
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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.
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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.
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Back in 2021, we heard how the Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane had made its first test flights … but it was using surrogate jet engines. Now, however, the vehicle has made its first flights using an actual rocket engine.
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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.
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Northrop Grumman has successfully completed the first full-scale static test fire of the first-stage solid-rocket motor for the LGM-35A Sentinel that will replace the US Air Force's Minuteman III nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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Explosions get you much more bang from your fuel buck than combustion – if your engine can withstand them. NASA believes the rotating detonation engine could be the future of deep space travel, and it's getting strong results in prototype testing.
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NASA and DARPA have agreed to develop and test a nuclear rocket engine in space as soon as 2027. Using a nuclear reactor as its power source, it would outperform chemical rockets and greatly reduce the time for the first crewed Mars mission.
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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.
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Equipmake says it's got the lightest and most power-dense electric motor on the market, and if there's one place where weight is critical, it's on a launch pad. The company has developed an ultra-lightweight motor for Australia's first rocket launch.
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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.
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