Smallest Orbital Launch Vehicle ready for Liftoff from Japan, Launch realigned for Saturday
Japan plans to launch the smallest orbital space launch vehicle ever flown on Saturday, lifting into orbit a tiny satellite of only 3 Kilograms.
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Month: January 2017
SpaceX Return to Flight Mission pushed to Saturday
SpaceX’s Return to Flight mission has been shifted from a Monday launch target to No Earlier Than Saturday, January 14, officials confirmed Sunday.
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China’s ‘Speedy Vessel’ races into Orbit on first Commercial Satellite Deployment
China’s Kuaizhou-1A “Speedy Vessel” conducted its first commercial launch on Monday, lifting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 4:11 UTC with a high-resolution video satellite and a pair of small CubeSats as payloads.
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Re-Entry: Sylda
A discarded Ariane 5 Sylda payload adapter placed into orbit in 2007 re-entered the atmosphere on January 7, 2017 after a nine-and-a-half-year drop from a highly elliptical Geostationary Transfer Orbit, having helped put a pair of communications satellites into orbit.
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Re-Entry: Long March 4B Rocket Body
A spent Long March 4B rocket stage re-entered the atmosphere on January 8, 2017 over the Canadian territory after seven months in orbit.
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Update: High-Risk Satellite Conjunction passes without Incident
Two satellites will come dangerously close to one another Saturday night and a collision can not be ruled out according to a warning issued by the Joint Space Operations Center that monitors all sizeable objects orbiting the Earth.
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Earth and Moon, as seen from Mars
NASA released a spectacular image on Monday showing the Earth and Moon from a unique perspective – the orbit of Mars. The photo – assembled from two separate exposures of Earth and Moon
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SpaceX receives FAA Launch License for upcoming Iridium Mission
The Federal Aviation Administration – the government body responsible for licensing all U.S.-operated space launches – granted a launch license to SpaceX covering upcoming missions from California, including next week’s Iridium-NEXT flight that will mark SpaceX’s return to flight mission after the dramatic September 1st explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida.
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Veteran Spacewalkers connect new Space Station Batteries, race through long Task List
Two astronauts spent their Friday working outside the International Space Station, completing a challenging spacewalk to integrate new batteries into one of the Station’s power channels to mark the beginning of a major transition in battery technology to enable ISS to head into its last decade of operations.
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket completes Static Fire Test ahead of critical Return to Flight Launch
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fired up its nine first stage engines on Thursday in a critical Static Fire Test carried out at Vandenberg Air Force Base in preparation for the rocket’s Return to Flight mission planned for Monday – coming back from a four-month stand-down following the dramatic September 1st testing accident at Cape Canaveral.
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Spacewalking Duo set for busy Battery Replacement EVA outside ISS
Two experienced spacewalkers will venture outside the hatches of the International Space Station on Friday to complete the installation of new batteries on one of the Station’s eight power channels that started with a flurry of robotics last weekend.
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China opens 2017 with obscure Communications Test Satellite Launch
China opened the reign of orbital space launches in 2017 on Thursday with the country’s Long March 3B heavy-lift rocket
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ISS Robots work Overtime replacing first Batch of Batteries ahead of Friday Spacewalk
The robots aboard the International Space Station were busy over the past four days starting the most complex robotic maintenance task every carried out on ISS to replace the Station’s aging batteries with new state of the art units that will power the orbiting laboratory for its final decade of operations.
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Re-Entry: CADRE CubeSat
Japan’s Shootingstar Sensing Satellite re-entered the atmosphere on November 23, 2016 after 14 months in orbit tasked with collecting data on meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere.
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Lucy & Psyche – NASA selects Missions to Explore a Metal Asteroid & Jupiter’s Trojans
NASA announced on Wednesday the selection of the Lucy and Psyche missions as the agency’s the agency next Discovery missions placing full focus on the study of asteroids as windows into the earliest eras of our Solar System. The two missions are aiming for launch in 2021 and 2023 with Lucy homing in on Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids while Psyche will visit a giant metallic asteroid.
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Chinese Earth-Imaging Satellites complete Orbit-Raising Campaign after Rocket Underperformance
Two Chinese Earth-imaging satellites spent the last week climbing into their operational orbits after being dropped off in a lower-than-planned orbit by their Long March 2D rocket on December 28.
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SpaceX completes Falcon 9 Failure Investigation, Missions to resume Sunday from Vandenberg
SpaceX concluded an exhaustive investigation into the cause of the dramatic explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket during a pre-launch test on September 1 and is now looking forward to returning to launch operations as early as Sunday
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