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Starship from flight 13 is just arriving back in Texas. Live: ----- Japan's Phobos sample return mission is scheduled to launch October 19. If everything goes to plan, samples will return to Earth in 2031. The mission also carries a small French/German Phobos rover. With a surface gravity of...

First single winner since Georges Charpak in 1992.

More views of the flight: Starlink looking back at Starship and a couple of other Starlink satellites deployed later, engines firing, and Starship over mountains and a tropical storm: Hot-staging from various perspectives: Takeoff as seen from the launch tower

Success for Starship Crew-13 has docked with the ISS an hour ago. Successful launch of Transporter-18 Falcon Heavy launch in 17 minutes - third and fourth Falcon booster to return to the launch site within 24 hours NASA never had a successful "13" crew mission before. * Mercury stopped after...

full resolution of first image Starlink satellite looking back at Starship after deployment: Booster landing (look for the shockwave!): The early reentries had tons of particles falling off the vehicle - you can see them as bright sparks racing across the screen. Step by step they have...

That was the default plan, but with options to return earlier. They chose one of these options. We don't know why, but some link to the upper stage engine failure is plausible. It still did all the interesting parts. Staying in orbit for 8 hours vs. 2 hours isn't that different in terms of what...

Yeah, that's the normal outcome. The ship is designed to be caught by the launch tower. For testing they simulate that landing by hovering over the ocean. The ship then cuts its engine, hits the water and falls over. Usually that leads to an explosion. The previous flight had the ship survive...

Reentry has started.

Starship will return after 3 hours Not clear why. They spent a bit more propellant on ascent, deorbiting earlier reduces boiloff in orbit, maybe that is linked. Deorbit burn should be in ~30 minutes from now. They have contact with all 26 satellites. Should be the heaviest object ever to reach...

Starship is in a circular orbit! They identified the issue with the vacuum engine and determined that it won't affect the rest of the mission. Edit: Payload deployment is underway. Edit: Payload deployment completed.

Good splashdown of the booster, even though it lost one or two engines in the middle ring. The upper stage lost a vacuum engine towards the end of the burn. This means they spent a bit more propellant on ascent to compensate. Not clear yet if they still go to orbit that way. Edit: No...

Starship launch in 15 minutes

3 hours and 15 minutes until the launch window opens. SpaceX coverage will start here in ~2:40 NASASpaceflight coverage is running Every orbital flight in history had at least one stage or tank that was discarded in flight - left to crash into the ocean, burn up on reentry, or remain in space...

SpaceX is going to have a busy week with three high-profile missions (and one routine flight): Monday: Starship flight 14, first to enter a circular orbit Thursday: Dragon Crew-13 (Falcon 9 from Florida) going to the ISS Thursday: Transporter-18 (Falcon 9 from California) launching dozens of...