321 Launch: Space news you may have missed over the past week (July 7)
SpaceX has plans to launch the first rocket between 5:03 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. on July 1 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A. This mission is known as MTG-S1, and is the European Space Agency's (ESA) Meteosat Third Generation Sounder satellite.
Read the full story here.
Launch recap: Scroll down to read live updates from the launch of the MTG-S1 weather satellite, which launched on time at 5:04 p.m. July 1 from Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A.
Read the full story here.
Read the full story here.
Launch recap: Scroll down to read live updates from the Starlink 10-25 mission which launched 2:28 a.m. July 2 from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Read the full story here.
Read the full story here.
During the first six months of the year, an array of 56 orbital rockets took flight from Florida's Space Coast. This unpreceded pace will zoom beyond 2024's freshly established annual record of 93 launches — should the cadence continue through year's end.
Will a new launch record materialize at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's neighboring Kennedy Space Center? Stay tuned.
Read the full story here.
In another post-midnight launch, SpaceX is targeting Tuesday, June 8, for an early morning Falcon 9 rocket liftoff from Florida's Space Coast, a Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory indicates.
This Starlink 10-28 mission will lift another payload of broadband satellites on a northeasterly trajectory into low-Earth orbit. The 4½-hour launch window extends from 1:48 a.m. to 6:18 a.m.
Read the full story here.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space. Another easy way: Click here to sign up for our weekly Space newsletter.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here.This article originally appeared on Florida Today: 321 Launch: Space news you may have missed over the past week (July 7)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
See it: Closest image of Sun yet taken by NASA's Parker Solar Probe
Last year, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made its record-breaking flyby of the Sun, zooming just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, and we're just now seeing some results from that close brush with our star. This week, Nasa released new images taken by the spacecraft from the record-breaking close approach of the Sun, including from an instrument called WISPER. As Parker skimmed through the Sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona, it used the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) to observe the corona and solar wind. Nasa's Parker Solar Probe Makes Historic Christmas Eve Flight Through Sun's Atmosphere The video below was created with images from WISPR, which shows solar wind in never-before-seen detail. According to NASA, this close-up shows what happens right after solar wind comes blasting out from the corona. It also shows multiple collisions of coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, the space weather phenomena most known for creating aurora lights on Earth. This data could be key to understanding space weather, according to Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR instrument scientist with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. NASA said as CMEs collide, their trajectory can change, making space weather forecasting more difficult to predict if these charged particles are headed for Earth. Still, scientists do not know how solar wind is created. "The big unknown has been: how is the solar wind generated, and how does it manage to escape the Sun's immense gravitational pull?" said Nour Rawafi, the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "Understanding this continuous flow of particles, particularly the slow solar wind, is a major challenge, especially given the diversity in the properties of these streams — but with Parker Solar Probe, we're closer than ever to uncovering their origins and how they evolve." Parker Solar Probe was named after the heliophysist Eugene Parker, who first theorized this concept in 1958. Parker was at the launch of the spacecraft with his namesake in 2018. He passed away at 94-years-old in 2022. article source: See it: Closest image of Sun yet taken by NASA's Parker Solar Probe
Digital Trends
2 hours ago
- Digital Trends
SpaceX is about to give Starlink's main rival a ride to orbit
SpaceX has been enjoying growing uptake of its internet-from-space Starlink service, but in a weird twist, the company is about to lend a hand to its main rival in the sector. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is about to launch 24 satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper program, which, like Starlink, will offer internet connectivity to individuals and businesses globally. Recommended Videos The mission is aiming to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:57 a.m. ET on Wednesday. A live webcast will begin about 15 minutes before launch, which you can watch on X @SpaceX. Amazon's Project Kuiper is still in its early days, having so far deployed only 54 internet satellites in two missions, the first of which took place in April. SpaceX's Starlink, meanwhile, is much further down the road, with more than 7,000 satellites now serving more than 5 million customers globally following its first deployment in 2019. Amazon used a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket for its first two Project Kuiper satellite launches. But the regulator has insisted that it must have half of its planned 3,200 satellites deployed by the end of July 2026, with the rest facing a July 2029 deadline for deployment. Failure to meet the initial milestone could risk key license permissions, though it's thought that Amazon would probably be granted additional time if needed. The tight deadline has prompted Amazon to tap the services of multiple launch providers, with not only ULA and SpaceX but also Arianespace, and Blue Origin — the company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — likely to send Project Kuiper satellites to orbit over the next 12 months and beyond. The unusual collaboration means that SpaceX is actually helping to accelerate a direct competitor's progress, a move that intensifies the high-stakes race for dominance in the orbital internet sector.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Skimming the Sun, probe sheds light on space weather threats
Eruptions of plasma piling atop one another, solar wind streaming out in exquisite detail -- the closest-ever images of our Sun are a gold mine for scientists. Captured by the Parker Solar Probe during its closest approach to our star starting on December 24, 2024, the images were recently released by NASA and are expected to deepen our understanding of space weather and help guard against solar threats to Earth. - A historic achievement – "We have been waiting for this moment since the late Fifties," Nour Rawafi, project scientist for the mission at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, told AFP. Previous spacecraft have studied the Sun, but from much farther away. Parker was launched in 2018 and is named after the late physicist Eugene Parker, who in 1958 theorized the existence of the solar wind -- a constant stream of electrically charged particles that fan out through the solar system. The probe recently entered its final orbit where its closest approach takes it to just 3.8 million miles from the Sun's surface -- a milestone first achieved on Christmas Eve 2024 and repeated twice since on an 88-day cycle. To put the proximity in perspective: if the distance between Earth and the Sun measured one foot, Parker would be hovering just half an inch away. Its heat shield was engineered to withstand up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius) -- but to the team's delight, it has only experienced around 2,000F (1090C) so far, revealing the limits of theoretical modeling. Remarkably, the probe's instruments, just a yard (meter) behind the shield, remain at little more than room temperature. - Staring at the Sun – The spacecraft carries a single imager, the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR), which captured data as Parker plunged through the Sun's corona, or outer atmosphere. Stitched into a seconds-long video, the new images reveal coronal mass ejections (CMEs) -- massive bursts of charged particles that drive space weather -- in high resolution for the first time. "We had multiple CMEs piling up on top of each other, which is what makes them so special," Rawafi said. "It's really amazing to see that dynamic happening there." Such eruptions triggered the widespread auroras seen across much of the world last May, as the Sun reached the peak of its 11-year cycle. Another striking feature is how the solar wind, flowing from the left of the image, traces a structure called the heliospheric current sheet: an invisible boundary where the Sun's magnetic field flips from north to south. It extends through the solar system in the shape of a twirling skirt and is critical to study, as it governs how solar eruptions propagate and how strongly they can affect Earth. - Why it matters – Space weather can have serious consequences, such as overwhelming power grids, disrupting communications, and threatening satellites. As thousands more satellites enter orbit in the coming years, tracking them and avoiding collisions will become increasingly difficult -- especially during solar disturbances, which can cause spacecraft to drift slightly from their intended orbits. Rawafi is particularly excited about what lies ahead, as the Sun heads toward the minimum of its cycle, expected in five to six years. Historically, some of the most extreme space weather events have occurred during this declining phase -- including the infamous Halloween Solar Storms of 2003, which forced astronauts aboard the International Space Station to shelter in a more shielded area. "Capturing some of these big, huge be a dream," he said. Parker still has far more fuel than engineers initially expected and could continue operating for decades -- until its solar panels degrade to the point where they can no longer generate enough power to keep the spacecraft properly oriented. When its mission does finally end, the probe will slowly disintegrate -- becoming, in Rawafi's words, "part of the solar wind itself." ia/jgc
