SpaceX

2024 has been a year in space that has seen successes, failures, a clutch of firsts, and some goodbyes – not to mention a long-distance probe rescue, spacesuits on the catwalk, and a couple of cosmic oddities. Let's have a look back.

It was 50% success today as SpaceX's Starship 7 mission lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas at 4:36 pm CST and ended with the second capture landing of the giant Super Heavy first stage and the unexplained loss of the Starship second stage.

SpaceX has just launched 20 of its Starlink satellites up into Earth's orbit, enabling direct-to-cellphone connectivity anywhere on the planet. That completes the constellation's first orbital shell, following a test of six satellites back in January.

The sixth flight of SpaceX's Starship went off today without a second capture landing of the Super Heavy first stage, but it did have a dramatic daylight powered soft landing of the Starship second stage in the Indian Ocean. And a banana.

Flight 6 of SpaceX's giant Starship is scheduled to fly no earlier than Monday, November 18, 2024. If there are no delays, the world's largest rocket ever to fly will lift off at 4:00 pm CST from the company's Texas Starbase. Here's how to watch.

As the world watched slack-jawed while SpaceX's Super Heavy booster made the world's first tower capture landing after boosting the Starship 5 mission into orbit, few knew that the event came within one second of disaster.

In an astonishing bit of space gymnastics, SpaceX has pulled off a true first. It captured a Super Heavy booster at about 7:31 am CT using its own launch tower after delivering a Starship second stage to orbit, followed by a controlled reentry.

After five days in orbit, the Polaris Dawn mission, which conducted the world's first commercial spacewalk, has returned safely to Earth. At 3:36 am EDT, the Dragon capsule Resilience splashed down off the coast of the Dry Tortugas, Florida.

The world's first private spacewalk has been completed. On September 12, 2024 at 7:58 am EDT, two of the four-person crew of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Resilience returned after a 106-minute tethered EVA 732 km (455 miles) above the Earth.

Having completed its first day in orbit, the Polaris Dawn mission is preparing to make the first private spacewalk in history. Two astronauts are scheduled to exit the Dragon spacecraft Resilience at 2:23 am EDT and here's how to watch.

The most ambitious private space mission yet, which will see the first private spacewalk, has lifted off. At 5:23 am EDT, the Polaris Dawn mission rose from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket for low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk says that the first of his company's Starship spacecraft will set off for Mars in two years and the first crewed missions will follow in 2028. He sees this as part of his plan to make humanity an interplanetary species.