cape canaveral

A moon lander was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.The Nova-C lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. ET atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket flown by SpaceX from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the two-stage, 25-storey rocket roaring off the launch pad and streaking into the…

NASA's newest climate satellite rocketed into orbit Thursday to survey the world's oceans and atmosphere in never-before-seen detail.SpaceX launched the Pace satellite on its $948-million US mission before dawn from Cape Canaveral, Fla., with the Falcon rocket heading south over the Atlantic Ocean to achieve a rare polar orbit.The satellite will spend at least three years studying the oceans from 676 kilometres up, as well as the atmosphere. It will scan the globe daily with two of the science instruments. A third…

A robotic lander built by a private company suffered a technical problem on its way to the moon on Monday, threatening to upend the first U.S. soft lunar landing in over 50 years.The issue with the lander's propulsion system followed a successful launch of a new Vulcan rocket debuted by a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.Space robotics firm Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander launched at 2:18 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the first flight of Vulcan, a powerful rocket that had been under development for…

NASA engineers finally tanked the massive Space Launch System rocket with fuel Monday night, getting through most of the last crucial test before its inaugural flight. After reviewing their trove of data from the test, the team will decide this summer’s launch date for the world’s most powerful rocket, part of the first major mission of the Artemis moon program.Having rolled the fully stacked mega-rocket, with the Orion crew capsule on top, out to the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the SLS team began…