NASA announced that its Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In‑Situ Exploration (PROMISE) will travel to the Moon’s south pole as the first step of the agency’s Moon Base Program. The rover will be powered by a small nuclear source and will be assembled largely from flight‑spare and test‑bed hardware originally built for the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers. By reusing proven components, NASA aims to reduce development time and cost while gathering high‑resolution terrain data, resource [...]

On 13 November 1971 NASA’s Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Mars, overtaking the Soviet Mars 2 despite the latter’s earlier launch. The probe arrived amid a planet‑wide dust storm, but its cameras later revealed the tops of massive volcanoes, including Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system, and the vast Valles Marineris canyon, five times longer than Earth’s Grand Canyon. Equipped with a camera, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and a radiometer, Mariner 9 mapped 85 percent of the [...]

SpaceX is slated to launch Starship Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, on Friday, November 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration granted the required flight license. The mission will use Booster 22 and Ship 42 to attempt the first full recovery of an orbital launch system, targeting a tower‑catch of the Super Heavy booster about six and a half minutes after liftoff and a tower‑catch of the Starship upper stage after more than 22 hours in space. Ship 42 will enter a roughly 275 km [...]

SpaceX launched Starship Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, aiming to catch both its Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage after orbital deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites. The 75‑minute window opened at 5:45 p.m. EST, with the booster catching occurring 6.5 minutes post‑liftoff and the upper stage targeting a 21‑hour return to the pad. A successful recovery would mark the first full orbital launch system return, advancing Starship’s goal of hourly launches by 2030.

SpaceX will launch Starship Flight 15 from Starbase on Friday, aiming to recover both the booster and the orbital stage—a first for an orbital rocket. Booster 22 will return to the launch tower 6½ minutes after liftoff, while Ship 42 will orbit 275 km, deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and return after 14 orbits, landing in the tower 22½ hours later. Successful recovery would validate Starship’s fully reusable design, potentially lowering launch costs and enabling frequent missions.

SpaceX is set to launch the 15th Starship test flight on Nov. 13, featuring the first simultaneous “chopsticks” catch of both its Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, Ship 42. The vehicle, rolled out to Starbase on Nov. 12, bears the phrase “Don’t panic,” a nod to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Musk’s long‑standing fandom. After liftoff, Super Heavy is slated to return to the launch pad about 6.5 minutes later, while Ship 42 will deploy 26 next‑generation [...]

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket is set to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:54 p.m. EST on Nov. 13, carrying 40 Amazon Leo low‑Earth‑orbit broadband satellites. The flight marks the vehicle’s first launch in nine months and its first mission for Amazon’s Leo constellation, following three prior Vulcan flights that suffered solid‑rocket‑booster nozzle failures. ULA has implemented a redesigned nozzle and additional testing to address the anomaly that prompted the U.S. Space Force to pause national‑security [...]