Infrastructure


Launch Records Topple in 2024 with Busiest January of Space Age

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 starlink satellites launches from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Jan. 7, 2024.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 starlink satellites launches from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Jan. 7, 2024.

Averaging a liftoff every 33 hours and 49 minutes, January’s 22 successful launches to space marked the busiest start to a year since the Space Age dawned in 1957, and put the globe on track for 259 launches in 2024, which would easily eclipse records set in 2023, according to a Space Foundation database. If the pace holds, this year could shatter 2023’s record of one launch every 39 hours, which sped past a record set in 2022 with a launch every 47 hours. Since 1957, January launches have proven to be a key predictor for annual launch numbers, with annual launch figures meeting or exceeding the January pace 93% of the time.

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As Experts Debate Leap Seconds, Universal Time Tangle Grows in Importance

Sundials like this one at the Royal Museum at Greenwich, England, have given way to atomic clocks. But arguments about time remain. Credit: Royal Museum GreenwichSundials like this one at the Royal Museum at Greenwich, England, have given way to atomic clocks. But arguments about time remain. Credit: Royal Museum Greenwich

Time, the measurement that science still has difficulty explaining, has allowed everything from transatlantic exploration to space travel and now is the fabric that holds together financial institutions, supply chains and the internet. But if you counted down the closing seconds of 2023 with New Year’s revelers, you were almost certainly wrong.

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Facing Safety, Budget Concerns, NASA Delays Artemis Moon Missions

With budget cuts on the horizon and technical hurdles to vault before astronauts return to the Moon, NASA pushed the brakes on its Artemis program launch schedule Tuesday, delaying a planned lunar fly-by mission into 2025 and its planned landing into 2026. The agency cited safety concerns for the delay, including an ongoing investigation into problems with a heatshield, which was damaged when the uncrewed Artemis I capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after a 2022 test flight. The move also comes as congressional negotiators mull slimming the agency’s budget by more than $500 million from its 2023, and $2.2 billion short of NASA’s 2024 budget request.

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With Maiden Flight, ULA’s Vulcan Joins 2024’s Stampede to Space

ULA's Vulcan launch vehicle blasts skyward for its maiden flight early Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. Credit: ULAULA's Vulcan launch vehicle blasts skyward for its maiden flight early Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. Credit: ULA

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan launch vehicle successfully roared aloft Monday on its maiden flight from Florida, carrying lunar payloads and keeping up a blistering pace of spaceflight that could drive 2024 past annual records for payloads sent to space and launches set in 2023. The first eight days of 2024 have seen four launches from the United States, including three by SpaceX, along with missions to orbit from India and China.

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