Accumulating a lot of experience … Booster 1076 entered the SpaceX fleet in 2021 and since then has launched missions including CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat Hotbird 13G, SES O3B mPOWER-A, PSN Satria, Telkomsat Merah Putih 2, Galileo L13, Koreasat-6A Crew-6, and USSF-124, plus 22 batches of Starlink satellites. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Atlas V launches heaviest payload. United Launch Alliance launched its latest Atlas 5 rocket, which carried a batch of 29 Amazon Leo satellites to low-Earth orbit early on April 4, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission was the largest and heaviest payload carried to orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket to date, according to ULA.

Upper stage performance is key … The previous four missions for Amazon Leo that launched on Atlas 5 rockets carried 27 satellites each. ULA and Amazon Leo were able to increase the payload stack to 29 as “a result of detailed engineering work between ULA and Amazon,” according to ULA. Amazon pointed to ULA’s use of the RL10C-1-1 engine on the rocket’s upper stage as a key reason why they were able to add two more satellites to the mission.

SLS rocket successfully delivers Artemis II crew to orbit. On April 1, the Space Launch System rocket majestically launched the Orion spacecraft into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. A few minutes after liftoff, as Artemis II headed east over the Atlantic Ocean, the astronauts got their first glimpse of the full Moon through their forward windows. “We have a beautiful moonrise,” Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman reported. “We’re heading right at it.”

Two for two … The SLS rocket has now launched two times, both successfully. In the days afterward, NASA engineers said the rocket had inserted Orion into its proper orbit with greater than 99 percent accuracy, better even than the Artemis I mission in late 2022. The Mobile Launch tower was being prepared for movement back into the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida for minor repairs and to prepare for the stacking of the SLS rocket for the Artemis III mission. The program is preparing to support a launch in 2027.