Elon Musk's SpaceX will be launching flight 50 for the Falcon 9 tonight with a payload of Spain's Hispasat satellite. That satellite weighs about 6 ton and is the size of a bus, according to Musk, and will be the largest satellite SpaceX has flown yet.

You can catch the livestream right here!

Earlier this month Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched Falcon Heavy, the company's most powerful rocket yet. Inside was a red Tesla Roadster sports car with built-in cameras for capturing what it sees as well as a copy of Isaac Asimov's science fiction book series Foundation, and a plane engraved with 6,000 SpaceX employee names. The car's destination: Mars.

SpaceX has now launched the most powerful spacecraft since the Apollo era – the Falcon Heavy rocket – setting the bar for future space launches. The most important thing about this reusable spacecraft is that it can carry a payload equivalent to sending five double-decker London buses into space – which will be invaluable for future manned space exploration or in sending bigger satellites into orbit. But what about the environmental impact?

Valentina Tereshkova worked at a textile mill as a teenager and began learning to parachute in her early 20s. As the space race between the US and the Soviets hastened, she applied to be an astronaut. On June 16, 1963, she climbed into a tiny capsule that would make her the first woman to ever be launched into space. Then she proclaimed: “Hey sky, take off your hat. I’m on my way!”

What a badass.

Hopefully you never find yourself in a situation where you have to engage with someone who believes in a flat Earth. On the off chance that you do, don't go in unprepared! Here's some hard ammunition you can use to thoroughly debunk them.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: South Australia have a good chunk of money for their space program, Animal Crossing is coming to mobile phones, makeup tutorial video absolutely terrifies me.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: Where to build a colony on the moon, Call of Duty implied assault scene altered in Australia, Canberra breeds more boys than girls.

Google added over 500,000 images to Google Maps yesterday taken by spacecraft, many of which were taken by Cassini, which was launched in space 20 years ago.

Recently, my colleagues had a go at ranking the planets. But it was mostly incorrect. After extensively researching and writing about our solar neighbourhood, I feel I'm fairly qualified to take a stab at ranking these bad boys once and for all.

While you wait seven years for America's next total solar eclipse, check out the New York Times calendar of astronomical events. Subscribe and never miss another meteor shower, rocket launch, or solstice.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: Bitcoin splits in two, AMD unveils new Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, NASA is hiring a "planetary protection officer".

Eating bread in space is a surprisingly dangerous undertaking: the free-floating crumbs could cause someone to choke, lodge themselves in someone's eye, or worst of all, cause a fire if it gets into the electrical panel. That's why most astronauts have to eat the less appealing alternative -- the tortilla.

If you're on the US East Coast and see some odd-coloured clouds in the sky today, it's probably science's fault.

It's a problem few of us are likely to ever have, but its good to know, right? If you're having a heart attack in space, you should do a handstand. Here's why.

No.

NASA has just released it's 2017-2018 software catalogue, which includes hundreds of free, royalty-free applications for a wide variety of uses.

Seven planets orbiting a single star have been discovered 40 light years away from Earth. According to NASA, all of them could support the presence of liquid water (and possibly living organisms). Read on to find out more.

Donald Trump has a shot at becoming one of the world's most powerful men. We've reached the carbon tipping point for Global Warming on Earth. Pauline Hanson is on the Australian Government's National Broadband Network (NBN) committee. Kind of makes you want to jump on a spaceship and leave this world behind, doesn't it?

Good news! You can sign up to become a citizen of Asgardia, a space-based nation that is currently at the early planning stage. So how would that work out for Australian citizens? Will you lose your citizenship if you want to be a part of Asgardia? Let's find out.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk revealed his plan to make humanity a multi-planetary species by building an express train to Mars. There are a lot of open questions about how this will work, technically speaking, and who will pay for it. But there's another fundamental issue that must be addressed before anybody can reserve a seat on the first spaceship out: Is going to Mars even legal?