#private spaceflight

Cliff Potts, CSO and Editor-in-Chief WPS News BAYBAY CITY, Leyte, Philippines — July 4, 2026 There are two different questions people often confuse when talking about SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA, and the future of human spaceflight. The first question is whether these companies receive federal money. They do. SpaceX and Blue Origin both have major NASA contracts, and SpaceX also has major…

Updated  March 17, 2025, 9:01 p.m. ET When the NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station in June, they expected to stay for maybe a few weeks. Instead, they’ve been up there for nine months. In a few hours, they will head home. Ms. Williams, Mr. Wilmore and two other astronauts will board a SpaceX capsule on Monday night for a journey back to…

Four astronauts are hoping that Friday is the day that they’ll get to head to the International Space Station. They were all ready to go on Wednesday after putting on their spacesuits and boarding their SpaceX spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But with less than 45 minutes left in the countdown, SpaceX called off the launch. Mission controllers were…

For SpaceX, 2025 should have been the best year yet. Elon Musk, the founder of the private space company, is one of the most influential people in the Oval Office, and President Trump has endorsed his vision of sending humans to Mars. But so far, it has not been a great year for the rocket company. The vehicle that is central to the Mars goal, SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket, has launched twice…

A day after landing on the moon, the robotic Athena spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines of Houston is dead. In an update on its website on Friday, the company confirmed that Athena had tipped onto its side — the same fate that befell its first lunar lander, Odysseus, last year. With its solar panels unable to face the sun, the spacecraft’s batteries could not recharge. The company said it did…