News Archive / Author: Patrick Attwell

Patrick Attwell is a native of Houston, Texas but he currently resides in Austin, Texas where he studies accounting at Concordia University Texas. Atwell has had a passion for all things pertaining to aerospace, rocketry, and aviation. Atwell has worked to cover these fields for more than a decade. After he attended and watched the launch of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission it gave him what is known in the space community as “rocket fever.” Since that time, Atwell has followed his dreams and has covered events dealing with NASA’s Commercial Crew flight assignments at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and other space-related events in the Lone Star State.

Articles By Patrick Attwell

• Blue Origin upgrading NASA test stand

  May 13th, 2019

  Blue Origin and NASA announced an agreement that would allow the company to test two of its new rocket engines in Alabama.

• Stratolaunch aircraft makes 1st flight

  April 13th, 2019

  At 6:58 a.m. PST (13:58 GMT) April 13, 2019, the world’s largest airplane took to the skies for the first time above the Mojave Desert.

• UPDATE: SpaceX’s 2nd Falcon Heavy to launch Arabsat-6A

  April 8th, 2019

  SpaceX is poised to conduct the first commercial launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket with the Arabsat-6A mission as early as this week.

• SpaceX’s Starship toppled, severely damaged during overnight storm

  January 23rd, 2019

  In the overnight hours of Jan. 22 and 23, SpaceX's Starship Hopper test article was severely damaged by strong winds at the SpaceX South Texas launch facility.

• NROL-71 kicks off ULA’s 2019 launch manifest

  January 19th, 2019

  LOMPOC, Calif. — United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully completed its first flight of 2019. Today's launch utilized the largest rocket in the Colorado-based company's arsenal to send a classified payload into space. In doing so the company finally managed to move past a saga of delays.

• SpaceX not alone in 2018’s high launch rate

  January 7th, 2019

  United Launch Alliance (ULA), Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and Virgin Galactic conducted 14 launches from the United States this past year.

• Shutdown: What’s open at NASA?

  December 29th, 2018

  With no sign that it will be resolved soon, the ongoing partial U.S. government shutdown looks to continue well into the first days or weeks of 2019. As such, it is having wide-reaching effects on NASA's operations.

• Classified: A review of US defense missions launched in 2018

  December 5th, 2018

  LOMPOC, Calif. -- 2018 has seen five payloads launched for the Department of Defense. Two of these missions were classified and one failed. With the upcoming flight of a ULA Delta Heavy with the NROL-71, SpaceFlight Insider takes a look back at the DoD's 2018 launch manifest.

• SpaceX expands range of landing sites with SAOCOM-1 flight

  October 8th, 2018

  SpaceX has just demonstrated its ability to land Falcon 9 first stages from each U.S. coast.