Tristan Jouve

SpaceX aborts two rocket launches in a row! For the first time in what feels like forever; SpaceX, the company that launched 165 times last year, aborted two different launches in a row. First with Starship on the 16th and second with a standard Starlink Falcon 9 mission on the 20th. Sometimes, luck just isn’t on your side. Best of luck to them to get these rockets back in working order.

China’s Long March 10B becomes the second rocket to ever get ‘caught’! The agency’s bet on a flexible cable-net recovery method has proved successful as the rocket’s first stage seems to be intact after being caught. It is not known what CASC/CALT will do with this vehicle. Congrats! :)

NASA announces the crew for the Artemis III mission! The four astronauts that will test both HLS landers in LEO are Commander Randy Bresnik, Italian Pilot Luca Parmitano from ESA as well as Mission specialists Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas. Congratulations to them and godspeed Artemis III!

French astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Arnaud Prost have both been announced to partake in different Vast missions! The first will take Pesquet and three others to the ISS while the second will be Vast’s first mission for their Haven-1 space station concept.

Blue Origin loses their only launch pad! On May 28th, at 9pm ET, the New Glenn booster named “No, it’s necessary” experienced an ‘anomaly’ (boom) while attempting a static-fire at pad LC-36C. The majority of pad infrastructure appears to be heavily damaged, most beyond repair. The consequences for Blue Origin are immense are this essentially grounds the whole company for at least a year.