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  SpaceX readies Crew Dragon for Halloween launch William Harwood Fri, October 29, 2021, 5:45 PM · 9 min read SpaceX is readying a Falcon 9 rocket for a pre-dawn Halloween launch Sunday to ferry three Americans and a German to the International Space Station. It will be the maiden flight of a new Crew Dragon capsule, "Endurance." Docking will kick off a hectic few days of handover activity as four departing astronauts, who  launched to the lab complex last April , bring their replacements up to speed on station operations before returning to Earth aboard their own Crew Dragon on November 5 to close out a 196-day mission. "That handover is pretty short on orbit," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's former chief of spaceflight operations and now a senior manager at SpaceX. "So it's a pretty intense time for us at SpaceX to make sure we're ready to go launch and then we're also ready to go retrieve a vehicle in a fairly short amount of time." A Spa...

  Virgin Galactic delays commercial space flights until the end of 2022 after test flagged problems with its spacecraft: Stock falls 13% after announcement Virgin Galactic's shares fell by 13 percent today after it announced that it will delay beginning of its commercial space tourism service to fourth quarter 2022 The space tourism company added it will begin work refurbishing and improving its spacecraft and carrier aircraft this month The announcement comes after the company was expected to fly its next space flight test this month The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Virgin Galactic  in September after launching an investigation on a deviation in the descent of the July 11 flight The FAA has now given Virgin Galactic its authorization to return to flight after completing the investigation By  ALASTAIR TALBOT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM PUBLISHED:   03:00, 15 October 2021  |  UPDATED:   07:40, 15 October 2021           e-...