Spacecraft

Super Heavy Booster 14 and Starship 35 blasting off (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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It was the afternoon in the USA when SpaceX conducted a new flight test of its Super Heavy rocket and Starship prototypes, launched from its base in Boca Chica, Texas. This is the 9th test involving the entire system of Elon Musk’s company, which is supposed to revolutionize space travel with an unprecedented transport capacity and being totally reusable. They are advanced prototypes with the Super Heavy identified as Booster 14, on its second flight in the first reuse of a Super Heavy, and the Starship Block 2 identified as Starship 35 or Ship35 or simply S35.

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A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-32 (Cargo Resupply Service 32) mission for NASA splashing down smoothly off the coast of California. The Dragon left the International Space Station about 36 hours earlier. For SpaceX, this was the 12th mission of the 2nd contract with NASA to transport supplies to the Station with the new version of the Dragon cargo spacecraft. The Dragon spacecraft had reached the International Space Station on April 22.

The Shenzhou 19 capsule after landing (Image courtesy Xinhua)

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A few hours ago, the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 19 mission returned to Earth after spending a little more than six months on the Chinese space station Tiangong, where they arrived on October 29, 2024. The three taikonauts Wang Haoze, Cai Xuzhe, and Song Lingdong had left the station about nine hours earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It’s a procedure that significantly reduces the time to return to Earth and now has become routine.

The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft blasting off (Photo courtesy Xinhua/Li Xin)

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A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 20 mission reached the Chinese space station Tiangong with an automated docking maneuver. They blasted off about 6.5 hours earlier atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. They form the 9th crew of the Chinese space station and will remain there for about six months, the standard duration for a mission.