Space FrontPage

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. — February 12, 2026

Moving at a pace slower than a casual bicycle ride, NASA’s towering Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule made their way to the launchpad in January, marking a quiet but historic milestone on the road back to the Moon. On Jan. 17, 2026, the nearly football-field-tall Space Launch System and its Orion spacecraft stack rolled out from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center to Launch Complex 39B at just under one mile per hour. The deliberate crawl stood in sharp contrast to what awaits on launch day, when the rocket is expected to accelerate to more than 22,000 miles per hour, sending four astronauts on a crewed journey around the Moon.

A pre-sunrise rocket engine test at Florida’s Space Coast has pushed NASA and SpaceX another step closer to launching their next long-duration astronaut mission to the International Space Station. At 3:16 a.m. EST (0816 UTC) on Sunday, Feb. 8, SpaceX conducted a static fire of its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. During the brief but critical test, all nine Merlin 1D engines on the rocket’s first stage ignited simultaneously for roughly 10 seconds at Space Launch Complex 40, confirming engine performance and validating key vehicle systems ahead of flight.

SpaceX’s next crewed mission for NASA is officially back on the launch calendar after U.S. regulators cleared the company’s workhorse rocket to return to flight.

United Launch Alliance has returned to operating on both U.S. coasts at the same time, staging Vulcan launch vehicles at pads in California and Florida for the first time since late 2022—a milestone in the company’s transition away from Atlas-era operations and toward a higher-cadence Vulcan manifest.

Four astronauts could lift off for the International Space Station as early as next week, capping a turbulent period for NASA’s commercial crew program marked by a rare medical evacuation, last-minute rocket concerns, and schedule clashes with the agency’s flagship Moon mission.

​ SpaceX has issued a temporary "pause" on all Falcon 9 launches following an engine malfunction at the conclusion of a Starlink mission on Monday, February 2. While the rocket successfully delivered its payload of 25 satellites to their intended orbit, the vehicle's upper stage experienced an "off-nominal condition" during a critical deorbit maneuver, raising concerns about orbital safety and hardware reliability.

A key countdown rehearsal for NASA’s first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon was cut short early Tuesday after engineers were unable to resolve an out-of-limits hydrogen leak, prompting the space agency to formally slip the long-awaited flight from February to no earlier than March.

A rare and punishing arctic outbreak sweeping through the Sunshine State has forced NASA to hit the brakes on its final major hurdle before returning humans to lunar orbit. On Friday, the space agency announced that abnormally cold temperatures and high winds have delayed a critical "wet dress rehearsal" for the Artemis II mission, subsequently pushing the earliest possible launch date to February 8.

In a strategic shift that marks a major turning point for the commercial space sector, Blue Origin announced on Friday that it is officially suspending its celebrated New Shepard flight program. The company, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, revealed that the hiatus will last for at least two years as it redirects its engineering talent and financial capital toward the intensifying race for the lunar surface. By pausing the suborbital flights that have famously carried nearly 100 people across the Karman line—the internationally recognized boundary of space—Blue Origin is signaling a decisive pivot away from short-duration tourism and toward the high-stakes infrastructure required for a permanent human presence on the Moon.

Rocket Lab successfully returned to the pad on Thursday, January 29, launching a critical Earth-observation satellite for South Korea. The mission, titled "Bridging the Swarm," marks a significant step forward for the Korean Peninsula’s disaster-monitoring capabilities, though the path to the launchpad was marked by several technical hurdles and nearly six weeks of delays.

In the quiet, predawn hours of Thursday morning, SpaceX punctuated a historic month of operations by successfully launching its 13th Falcon 9 mission of January. While the launch marked a significant cadence milestone for the aerospace giant, the company followed the mission with a major announcement: the release of Stargaze, a revolutionary space-traffic management tool designed to prevent catastrophic orbital collisions.