The uncrewed SpaceX Starship exploded mid-flight on Thursday, March 6, 2025, after lifting off from the company’s Starbase facility in South Texas at 17:30 CST (23:30 UTC). The Super Heavy booster successfully executed a return and mid-air catch, but the Starship upper stage was lost in a spectacular explosion, causing temporary air traffic disruptions.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage made an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over Europe on February 19, 2025, creating a bright display across the night sky before debris impacted multiple locations in Poland.
Starlink satellites are re-entering Earth’s atmosphere at an increasing rate, with 120 burning up in January 2025 alone. This has created nightly artificial meteor showers and raised concerns about aluminum oxide accumulation in the atmosphere.
Debris from SpaceX’s Starship scattered over the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, January 16, 2025, after the spacecraft broke apart mid-flight. SpaceX conducted its 7th Starship test flight from Boca Chica, Texas, at 17:00 LT (22:00 UTC) on January 16, 2025.
A long march 2F rocket topped with the Shenzhou 19 crew spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on October 19, 2024, at 4:27 p.m. EDT ( 20:27 UTC), rising into a night sky above the spaceport.
NASA engineers have successfully integrated the state-of-the-art Roman Coronagraph Instrument with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Instrument Carrier at the Goddard Space Flight Center, marking a key milestone in the telescope’s assembly and readiness for its scheduled 2027 launch.
After 24 years of studying Earth’s magnetosphere, the ESA’s Salsa satellite from the Cluster mission is on course to reenter the atmosphere in a controlled descent. The reentry, scheduled for 18:48 UTC, on September 8, 2024, is part of a broader effort by the ESA to mitigate space debris risks by ensuring the satellite disintegrates safely over the South Pacific.
A recent study shows that a plume of debris produced by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission’s impact on Dimorphos in 2022, could reach Mars and Earth within 7 years, creating a new meteor shower.
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft successfully passed through Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, completing a significant achievement in its mission to explore Jupiter. The mission, led by ESA, tested the RADiation-hard Electron Monitor (RADEM), designed to measure high-energy particles in severe settings.
NASA has postponed the return of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) due to safety concerns over Boeing’s Starliner aircraft. The mission, originally planned for September 2024, has been postponed to February 2025.
