Falcon Heavy flew for the first time in eighteen months on April 29, 2026, expending its center core to push Viasat's final ViaSat-3 satellite toward geostationary orbit. The mission is a flagship rocket doing what only it can still do, for an operator betting six tons of high-throughput hardware on a market Starlink is rapidly redefining.
SpaceX's third rideshare mission of 2026 delivered South Korea's CAS500-2 imager and 45 secondary payloads to Sun-synchronous orbit on Falcon 9.
NASA's Artemis 3 lunar landing mission schedule continues slipping over 2 months after revised plans announced, with no crew or surface activity details released publicly yet.
On May 4, 1989, Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from LC-39B carrying Magellan, NASA's first interplanetary mission since 1978. The eleven-year drought ended in a payload bay, and the radar that emerged would map ninety-eight percent of Venus through clouds that no camera could ever see through.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rideshare lifted 45 satellites including South Korea's CAS500-2 Earth observer from Vandenberg at 0700 UTC May 3.
SpaceX Falcon 9 successfully deployed Korea Aerospace Industries' CAS500-2 Earth observation satellite plus 44 rideshare payloads from Vandenberg. 45 new trackable objects entering orbit.
