China conducted its third space launch in a span of just over four days on Saturday, involving a Long March 2D rocket lifting off from the country’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to dispatch the third satellite in the LKW Land Survey Constellation into orbit.
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A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket thundered off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Friday on classified government business, lifting the secret NROL-47 satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to replenish the U.S. spy satellite fleet.
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India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle opened the country’s space flight year 2018 on Friday with an impressive Return-To-Flight mission lifting into orbit an assortment of 31 satellites of vastly different shapes and sizes for operators in seven different countries.
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China opened its 2018 space launch campaign on Tuesday with the launch of the second pair of Gaojing Earth-Imaging Satellites joining the growing SuperView constellation delivering observation products for the commercial market.
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral under a veil of darkness Sunday night, both literally and figuratively with launch occurring at 1:00 UTC Monday morning, carrying into orbit the top-secret Zuma spacecraft which, from a public perspective, has all traits of a black project.
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The year 2017 saw a total of 90 known orbital launch attempts from seven nations and space ports in eight different countries. 2017 had the second most orbital launch attempts of any year in the current century, short of 92 launches in 2014 and showing a slight increase from 2016 that had 85 known launch attempts.
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The thunder of a Zenit rocket returned to Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome Tuesday night for the first time in two years as the Russian-Ukrainian booster made its long-awaited return to lift Angola’s first communications satellite into Geostationary Orbit.
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Two days after placing an Earth-imaging satellite into orbit, China was in action again on Monday for the country’s fourth launch of the month and the final expected Chinese mission in 2017, involving a Long March 2C rocket lifting the third group of Yaogan-30 electromagnetic-sensing satellites into orbit.
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China sent the second satellite of the LKW constellation into orbit on Saturday via a Long March 2D rocket, coming less than three weeks after the first LKW satellite reached orbit in what observers suspected was the first launch in a new series of reconnaissance spacecraft flying under the cover of land surveying missions.
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Japan’s H-IIA rocket leapt off its sea-side launch pad on Tanegashima Island at 10:26 a.m. local time, 1:26 UTC on Saturday, soaring into orbit with a high-profile climate observation satellite and a technology demonstration spacecraft set for a mission orbiting the edge of the atmosphere to develop previously unused orbital real estate.
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A flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket lit up the evening sky over California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Friday to deploy ten more Iridium-NEXT communications satellites to take the largest satellite constellation upgrade ever undertaken across the halfway point to the finish line.
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Three crewmen from Russia, the U.S. and Japan blasted off in freezing temperatures on Sunday to set sail on a two-day rendezvous with the International Space Station to kick off a half-year mission living and working in space to conduct world-class science and outfit the orbital outpost for operations heading into the next decade.
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Sporting a sooty attire from a previous voyage, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted the fourth Dragon mission of 2017 to the International Space Station into orbit on Friday to deliver science gear, systems hardware, crew supplies and two external payloads
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Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center on Tuesday on its second mission in support of the Galileo Navigation Satellite System, aiming to add the next four members to the growing constellation set to reach operational strength in 2018 to begin offering global navigation services.
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China was in action again on Sunday, launching a Long March 3B rocket carrying the Chinese-built AlcomSat-1 communications satellite for operation by the Algerian Space Agency as a dual-purpose spacecraft for civilian and military communications.
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China conducted its 15th orbital launch of the year on Sunday, involving a Long March 2D rocket lifting the LKW-1 imaging satellite into orbit.
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Coming on the heels of a failed launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome earlier in the week, Russia successfully launched a Soyuz 2-1B rocket from the country’s prime military launch site at Plesetsk, placing the Lotos-S1 No. 803 electronic intelligence-gathering satellite
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