SpaceX remains on target to launch its landmark Demo-2 mission to the space station this week, NASA officials said.

From Kennedy Space Center’s launch complex on May 27, NASA and SpaceX will launch the first crewed flight into orbit from U.S. soil since 2011. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley and Douglas Hurley will fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifting off on a Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX will be the first private company to launch astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS)

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NASA’s human spaceflight chief Doug Loverro has stepped down just a week ahead of a historic SpaceX crew launch for the U.S. space agency.

Tune in live at 4 p.m. EDT, as NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken arrive at Kennedy Space Center to meet the SpaceX #CrewDragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket that will launch them to the space station and into history.

SpaceX appears to have successfully fired up its fourth full-scale Starship prototype for the third time, although the Raptor engine test ended with the aft end of the ship catching fire and burning for quite some time.

Around May 7th, hours after Starship SN4 completed its second wet dress rehearsal and Raptor static fire in ~24 hours, SpaceX removed the SN18 Raptor engine it had used to support those tests, transporting it back to storage facilities a mile down the road. Three days later, SpaceX sent Raptor SN20 down the same same road and installed it on Starship SN4 – a swap made for unknown reasons.

Regardless, that swap meant that SpaceX would need to perform at least one more static fire test to prove that Starship and its new Raptor engine were getting along before the company could proceed to hop test preparations. After several days of at least 4 aborted Starship static fire attempts, SpaceX has finally managed to fuel Starship SN4 and ignite Raptor engine SN20 – but not before a new challenge cropped up.

Dunn played an important role in the history of SpaceX.

Ion propulsion company Accion Systems has raised $11 million in its latest funding round and has launches and contracts planned this year with NASA, the DoD and academic institutions.

Nearly 14 months ago, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a meeting of the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama, and changed the trajectory of NASA’s human spaceflight program. Pence directed NASA to accelerate its schedule for returning humans to the Moon, which at the time called for a landing by 2028. The new goal: land American astronauts on the Moon “within the next five years,” a goal subsequently interpreted to mean by the end of 2024 (see “Lunar whiplash”, The Space Review, April 1, 2019.)

Much of what NASA needed to accomplish the revised goal was already in development, notably the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System. Both had suffered significant delays but (presumably) would be ready in time to launch NASA astronauts to orbit the Moon, perhaps using the lunar Gateway also under development. What was missing, though, was that last, but most essential, element: a lander to take astronauts down to the surface and then return them to lunar orbit.

No longer. On April 30, NASA announced it had awarded contracts to three companies for its Human Landing System (HLS) program. The awards to Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX, with a cumulative value of $967 million, will fund initial studies for human lunar lander concepts over the next ten months. NASA will then select one or more companies for full-scale lander development, with the goal of having a lander ready for the Artemis 3 mission before the end of 2024.