Enlarge / Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane is almost ready to leave its factory. (credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica)

LOUISVILLE, Colorado—The first Dream Chaser spaceplane built to go into orbit is starting to look the part. Its foldable wings and fuselage are covered in custom-fitted ceramic tiles to shield the spacecraft's composite structure from the scorching heat of atmospheric reentry as it flies back to Earth. It has its landing gear, and technicians buzz around the vehicle to add the finishing touches before it leaves the factory.

Inside the spacecraft, workers are installing the final ducts for the environmental control system, which will make the pressurized compartment within Dream Chaser livable for astronauts at the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser's job, at least for now, is to ferry cargo to and from the research complex orbiting some 240 miles (385 kilometers) above Earth. It will launch on top of a conventional rocket, maneuver in space like a satellite, and then land on a runway.

Across the hall from the production floor, Sierra Space has set up a mission control room, where engineers will monitor and command the spacecraft when it's in orbit. Down the hall, a mock-up is in place for astronauts to train on how to enter the Dream Chaser and pack and unpack cargo while it's docked at the station.

Enlarge / NASA astronaut Frank Rubio smiles and waves moments after arriving back on Earth to wrap up more than a year in orbit. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls )

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian crewmates parachuted to a landing on the remote steppe of Kazakhstan Wednesday, capping a 371-day mission at the International Space Station, the longest single spaceflight ever undertaken by an American.

It was also the third-longest mission off the planet in the history of human spaceflight, eclipsed only by two Russian cosmonauts who lived on the Mir space station in the 1990s.

Rubio, a US Army lieutenant colonel who grew up in El Salvador and Miami, was supposed to spend about six months in low-Earth orbit on the International Space Station. He launched September 21 of last year on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dmitri Petelin.

Enlarge / SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean early Monday off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. (credit: NASA TV )

A SpaceX Dragon capsule with a crew of four returning from the International Space Station streaked through the atmosphere over Florida and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean early Monday, closing out the company's initial commercial crew contract with NASA.

But SpaceX has at least eight more space station crew rotation missions under contract with the US space agency, plus additional flights for private customers using the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The first of the crew rotation missions covered in the NASA contract extension launched on August 26 , and the spacecraft is currently docked at the ISS.

The mission that launched last month, designated Crew-7, is SpaceX's seventh operational crew rotation flight to the space station. The four-person crew that arrived at the station on Crew-7 will live and work aboard the orbiting outpost until February, replacing the Crew-6 mission that returned to Earth early Monday.

Enlarge / This long exposure photo of the Crew-7 launch shows SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket streaking into the sky over NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, followed by the return of the Falcon 9 booster to Earth. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica)

SpaceX launched a Dragon spacecraft into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast early Saturday, carrying a multinational crew from the United States, Denmark, Japan, and Russia on a flight to the International Space Station.

The four crew members strapped into their seats inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft overnight and then waited for a Falcon 9 rocket to shoot them into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. With a flash of orange light, the rocket's nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines ignited and propelled the Falcon 9 off the launch pad at 3:27 am EDT (07:27 UTC).

The rocket headed northeast from the Florida coast to arc over the Atlantic Ocean and line up with the flight path of the International Space Station. About two-and-a-half minutes into the launch, the Falcon 9's first stage booster separated from the rocket's upper stage to begin thrusting back toward Cape Canaveral. The return maneuver culminated in an on-target vertical landing a few miles south of the launch pad.

Enlarge / SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, seen here last week, has been integrated with its Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff Friday. (credit: SpaceX )

SpaceX is launching a mission about once every four days, and most of those flights are going to space to deploy Internet satellites for the company's own Starlink broadband network. But this week is different. Aside from two more missions carrying Starlink satellites, SpaceX is preparing to send a four-person crew to the International Space Station early Friday.

The crew launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will deliver NASA commander Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov to the space station for a half-year stay. This mission, known as Crew-7, will be SpaceX's 11th astronaut flight and the company's seventh operational crew rotation mission for NASA using a Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, says these crew missions are special. SpaceX and NASA managers met Monday for a flight readiness review, a customary milestone before every crew launch, to deliberate on any problems that could affect the upcoming mission.

Enlarge / Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, astronaut Michael Barrett, commander Matthew Dominick, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps make up the Crew-8 mission. (credit: NASA)

NASA confirmed on Friday that Jeanette Epps, a former CIA technology intelligence officer selected as an astronaut in 2009, will finally launch into space in early 2024 on a SpaceX flight to the International Space Station. The crew assignment comes six years after NASA pulled Epps from what would have been her first spaceflight, just months before her scheduled launch to the space station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The removal of Epps from the Soyuz mission in 2018 raised a lot of questions. It's not the first time NASA has pulled an astronaut off of space missions soon before launch, but it's usually for medical reasons, like an illness or an injury.

That wasn't the case for Epps, who was replaced by a backup crew member on the Soyuz flight in 2018. NASA never publicly stated a reason for the crew change. Some people outside the agency theorized Epps might have been removed from her flight for political or racial reasons—she would have become the first Black astronaut to fly a long-duration stint on the space station—but Ars has reported that did not appear to be the case .

Enlarge / Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket rolls out of its hangar at Wallops Island, Virginia. Its two Russian engines are visible on the back of the first stage. (credit: NASA/Patrick Black )

A last gasp in a long-standing link between Russia and Ukraine in the field of rocketry could come this week in an unlikely place—the rural wetlands of eastern Virginia—halfway around the world from the battlefields where the nations' military forces are locked in a deadly conflict.

A commercial Antares rocket owned by the US aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman is set for launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, as soon as Tuesday evening hauling an automated Cygnus supply ship into orbit on a mission to the International Space Station. When it takes off, the Antares rocket will be powered by two Russian-made engines affixed to the bottom of a first-stage booster built in Ukraine.

This is how Northrop Grumman has launched most of its 19 resupply missions to the space station since 2013, but this week's mission will be the last Antares flight to use Russian and Ukrainian components. Northrop Grumman has partnered with Firefly Aerospace, which has already built and launched a small satellite launcher of its own, to develop a new US-built first stage to replace the Ukrainian booster. Firefly will supply seven of its own engines, called the Miranda, to propel each of the new-generation Antares rockets into space.