After a two day stand down thanks to weather, SpaceX launched its first Falcon Heavy in 18 months from Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. It was the 12th Falcon Heavy mission overall and the 31st launch overall this year from Florida.
On a day that saw SpaceX scrub a Falcon Heavy launch inside the last minute thanks to a nearbyh shower, United Launch Alliance had far better weather conditions later as the dusk faded into the night. They launched an Atlas V 551 at 8:53:30 PM EDT, sending another 29 broadband satellites toward low Earth orbit for the Amazon Leo constellation. ULA confirmed deployment of all 29 spacecraft shortly after.
Today’s launch was the first commercial payload for New Glenn, the first time it has reused a booster, and the second time it has successfully landed a booster aboard Blue Origin’s drone ship, Jacklyn. Unfortunately, later in the mission, New Glenn’s second stage failed to deliver the payload into its intended orbit.
While the initial ascent was picture perfect, the end result was not. At roughly T+2h 15m into the mission, Blue Origin reported that the satellite was delivered into an off-nominal orbit.
As seen from KARS Park. This is a great place to see a launch if you are visiting the Space Coast.
United Launch Alliance successfully launched its Vulcan Centaur rocket early Thursday morning, carrying a national security payload for the U.S. Space Force on the USSF-87 mission.
Liftoff occurred at 4:22 AM ET from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, about midway through a two-hour window that opened at 3:30 AM.
A few photos from February 1, 2026, of Artemis II from Beach Road at Kennedy Space Center.
On one of those rare nights where it is actually winter on the Space Coast, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying the GPS III SV09 satellite to orbit for the US Space Force. Liftoff was at 11:53 PM ET into clear, chilly skies.
Here’s a chart of the Artemis II weather criteria.
One of the goals of SLS was to reuse remaining hardware from NASA’s Shuttle program where possible. This was intended to be a cost-saving measure, but given the high price of a single SLS stack costs more than two billion dollars: The SLS rocket for Artemis II (and each Artemis mission) costs approximately $4.1 billion per launch per the NASA OIG, with about half of that being tied up in the rocket and capsule. That’s a lot of money.
Still, there a lot of previously flown pieces of hardware on America’s newest moon rocket.
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