Science

Following undocking from the International Space Station at 0505 UTC on March 18, SpaceX Dragon Freedom splashed down at 2157 UTC off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida in the Gulf of America. Aboard were NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, and stranded Boeing Starliner crew Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore

Watch with us as the four members of NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 mission—NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—return to Earth. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore began their mission at the International Space Station on June 6, 2024, arriving aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived at the station on Sept. 29, 2024. Hague and Gorbunov launched to space aboard SpaceX's Dragon Freedom spacecraft, which has been docked to the station since September and is now bringing Crew-9 back home. Crew-9 is scheduled to begin their deorbit burn at 5:11 p.m. EDT (2111 UTC) and splash down off the coast of Florida at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 UTC). After splashdown, crews will retrieve the Dragon and its crew in a process scheduled to take approximately one hour.

After a 28-hour flight aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance, NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission successfully docked with the International Space Station. Floating aboard the station are The Crew-10 mission, commander NASA astronaut Anne McClain and pilot NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, mission specialists Takuya Onishi of JAXA and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the Crew-10 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 2303 UTC on March 14. The mission, commanded by NASA astronaut Anne McClain and piloted by NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, also includes mission specialists Takuya Onishi of JAXA and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle launched SPHEREx and PUNCH from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on 12 March at 0310 UTC. Falcon 9’s first stage (B1088) landed on Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is NASA’s newest space telescope that “will observe hundreds of millions of galaxies and other objects during its two-year mission, mapping the cosmos in wavelengths invisible to the human eye”. PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) is a “constellation of four small satellites in a polar (Sun-synchronous) low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the entire inner heliosphere to learn how the Sun's corona becomes the solar wind”

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 (Blue Ghost M1 lunar lander) landed on the Moon, in the Mare Crisium basin, near an ancient volcanic feature called Mons Latreille, on 2 March 2025, at 08:34 UTC.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex-39A at 0017 UTC (on Feb. 27), carrying Athena and NASA's ride-along Lunar Trailblazer orbiter aloft against a darkening sky at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. Athena was built by the Houston-based spaceflight company Intuitive Machines.

The New Shepard reusable launch system was launched from and landed at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas, on 4 February 2025, at 16:00 UTC. The New Shepard capsule carried 30 payloads and simulated Moon’s gravity for testing lunar-related technologies. This was the second mission for Blue Origin’s second human-rated New Shepard (NS5) and the eleventh mission for the RSS H. G. Wells payload capsule

A small asteroid lit up the skies over northern Siberia Wednesday (Dec. 4) after burning up in Earth's atmosphere in a "spectacular" (yet harmless) fireball. Astronomers spotted the space rock temporarily named C0WEPC5, measuring 70 centimeters in diameter, in the early hours on Wednesday local time, just hours before it entered the atmosphere.

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched the cargo Progress MS-29(ISS Progress 90) spacecraft to the International Space Station(ISS) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 21, at 1222 UTC. The Progress MS-29 spacecraft autonomously docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module, on the ISS, on 23 Nov, at 1431 UTC. ISS Progress 90(or Progress MS-29) mission delivered nearly three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 72 crew aboard the station