SpaceX lifted off on its 15th Starship test flight from Starbase, Texas, at 5:47 p.m. ET on Nov. 13, propelling the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage with 18 million pounds of thrust from 33 Raptor 3 engines. After a nominal ascent, the booster performed main‑engine cutoff and the Ship hot‑staged, separating 2.5 minutes after launch. Super Heavy reoriented for a planned tower “chopstick” catch but instead executed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico six and a half minutes after [...]

The California Science Center opened its new Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center on Nov. 13, unveiling the retired space shuttle Endeavour, nearly 200 feet tall, in a dedicated exhibit. Visitors can view the shuttle from below, inside the cockpit, and from a replica launch tower with a transparent floor. Interactive displays include a landing simulator and shuttle artifacts. The center, free to the public, requires online reservations during the opening period. The launch‑tower experience offers a [...]

Rocket Lab will launch its 100th mission, “The Mountain God Rises,” on November 14 from its New Zealand site. An Electron rocket will carry a private Japanese Earth‑observing satellite for iQPS, deploying a synthetic‑aperture‑radar payload into low Earth orbit. The launch, scheduled for 12:30 a.m. EST, will be streamed live by Rocket Lab and Space.com. Rocket Lab claims a 96 % reliability rate across 99 flights, noting this milestone is the fastest for a commercial small‑lift rocket. [...]

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.