Russia’s Soyuz FG rocket rolled out to its historic launch pad at Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome under waves of early morning fog on Monday in preparation for liftoff with an all-veteran crew on Wednesday to send them off on a half-year Expedition to the International Space Station.
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China was back in action on Saturday with the country’s eighth orbital space launch of the year, deploying the fourth satellite in the LKW “Land Survey Constellation.”
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A Russian-built Soyuz rocket soared into the skies over the Guiana Space Center on Friday with the fourth set of O3b broadband satellites joining twelve constellation craft launched in recent years to connect those parts of the world where Internet access is not readily available through conventional means.
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SpaceX’s 50th Falcon 9 rocket lit up the sky over Florida’s Space Coast after a midnight-hour liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, blasting into orbit on a heavy-loaded mission with the Hispasat 30W-6 multi-purpose communications satellite.
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The next crew headed to the International Space Station – comprising a veteran ISS Cosmonaut and a pair of Shuttle fliers – arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome last weekend to enter their final preparations for launch on a five-month flight as part of ISS Expeditions 55 and 56.
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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket pierced into the afternoon clouds over Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Thursday, carrying into orbit a critical U.S. weather satellite set to join a sister spacecraft launched one and a half years ago to complete NOAA’s high-orbiting constellation of next-generation weather sentinels.
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A veteran Cosmonaut and two NASA Astronauts parachuted into the sunrise on Wednesday aboard their Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft after a half-year mission to the International Space Station, touching down on the snow-covered steppe of Kazakhstan after circling the Earth 2,688 times and covering 114.5 million Kilometers.
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Blasting into clear skies over the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan’s H-IIA rocket embarked on a clandestine mission on Tuesday to launch the country’s next sharply-eyed optical reconnaissance satellite flying under the Information Gathering Satellite Program.
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Two NASA Astronauts and a veteran Russian Cosmonaut are on the verge of their return to Earth after a 168-day stay on the International Space Station, set for a parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown on the frozen steppe of Kazakhstan just after sun-up on Wednesday aboard their Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft.
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ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter circling Mars since October 2016 this week finished a delicate aero-braking campaign of nearly one year that moved the spacecraft from a highly elliptical orbit into a nearly circular Low Mars Orbit in preparation for a final set of trimming maneuvers and the start of a highly anticipated science mission.
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket provided a spectacular show to morning commuters across Southern California on Thursday after taking off from Vandenberg Air Force Base with Spain’s PAZ radar satellite and a pair of SpaceX prototype broadband satellites.
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A veteran NASA spacewalker and an EVA rookie from Japan ended their week with nearly six hours of work outside the International Space Station on Friday to finish the restoration of the Station’s Mobile Servicing System that started last year and continued in January to provide Canadarm2 with a new pair of grappling hands.
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The Progress MS-08 cargo spacecraft pulled into its orbital docking port on Thursday after a two-day journey to the International Space Station, marking the delivery of 2,494 Kilograms of cargo to the orbiting outpost.
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It was a Déjà vu at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sunday when a Soyuz rocket stood fully fueled for an express cargo delivery to the International Space Station but suffered a last-second abort of its countdown moments before lighting the engines
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The stakes were high for SpaceX on Tuesday when their triple-core monster rocket leapt off from Florida’s Space Coast on an ambitious shakedown mission that held many unknowns for the California-based company.
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A decade-long journey to the launch pad could end on Tuesday for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket with the long-awaited maiden launch of the tri-core rocket. With a commercial launch license from the FAA in hand, a clean Launch Readiness Review and fair weather forecast, SpaceX wheeled the monster rocket up the ramp to Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center Sunday night and placed it in its vertical launch position for liftoff on Tuesday during a two-and-a-half-hour window opening at 18:30 UTC, 1:30 p.m. local time.
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A beefed-up sounding rocket-turned-orbital-launch-vehicle zoomed into the skies over Japan’s Kyushu Island on Saturday in a bid to become the smallest launch vehicle to successfully achieve orbit one year after its inaugural test flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
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