The Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft blasting off atop a Falcon 9 rocket to start the Crew-10 mission (Image NASA)

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A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in its Crew-10 or SpaceX Crew-10 mission. After almost exactly ten minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and went en route to carry out its mission. This is the 10th crewed mission of the Crew Dragon spacecraft within the normal rotation of the International Space Station crew.

Artist’s Illustration of Exoplanets Orbiting Barnard’s Star (Image International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports confirmation of the existence of four exoplanets that are smaller than Earth orbiting Barnard’s Star. A team of researchers combined detections obtained with the MAROON-X instrument mounted on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii with others obtained independently with the ESPRESSO instrument installed on ESO’s VLT in Chile. The result is the confirmation of the exoplanet Barnard b, whose existence was announced in October 2024, and three other sub-Earths, small planets that are almost certainly rocky.

The SPHEREx space telescope and the PUNCH satellites blasting off atop a Falcon 9 rocket (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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A few hours ago, the SPHEREx space telescope and the PUNCH satellites, two NASA astronomy missions, blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg base. After about 42 minutes, SPHEREx successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage, and about 10 minutes later, the PUNCH satellites also separated, within about a minute. Both missions will operate from a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers for SPHEREx and 570 kilometers for PUNCH.

Super Heavy 15 and Starship 34 at liftoff (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 8th 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 15 and the Starship Block 2 identified as Starship 34 or Ship34 or simply S34.

Image captured by Machines’ Nova-C Athena lander during its descent (Image courtesy Intuitive Machines / NASA)

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A little while ago, Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Athena lander attempted its Moon landing in the Mons Mouton area. This was an autonomous maneuver that was the key step in the IM-2 mission. In the minutes following the end of the maneuver, signals started arriving at mission control with increasing clarity. This allowed them to start understanding Athena’s situation.