spaceflight

CASC's new Long March 10B caught its own booster in a sea-based net on its maiden flight July 10, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the only operators to recover an orbital-class rocket stage.

Japan's Hayabusa2 completed a successful July 5 flyby of asteroid Torifune, passing about 10 km away and returning first optical and thermal images that show a two-lobed contact binary.

JAXA's extended Hayabusa2 mission will pass roughly 1 km from asteroid Torifune at 5 km/s on July 5, testing guidance for planetary defense.

NASA assigned Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Andre Douglas, and Frank Rubio to Artemis III, a 2027 Earth-orbit test flight to practice docking with SpaceX and Blue Origin landers.

China's tenth Tianzhou cargo spacecraft lifted off from Wenchang at 8:14 a.m. Beijing time on May 11 and rendezvoused with Tiangong's Tianhe core module the same afternoon, delivering propellant, a new EVA suit, and six scientific payloads.

Psyche will pass 4,500 kilometers above Mars on May 15 at 12,333 mph, harnessing the planet's gravity to redirect itself toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche and calibrate its imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray spectrometer.

NASA classified the 2024 Boeing Starliner crewed flight as a Type A mishap — its most severe designation — after an investigation found helium leaks, thruster failures, suppressed dissent, and a culture of mistrust that stranded two astronauts for nine months.