Although there has been no official word from SpaceX, nor even a tweet from Elon Musk, according to Wacotrib.com Space X apparently conducted another moderately long duration test of the Falcon 9-R Wednesday evening. It is unclear just how long the test lasted with witnesses saying it was “about a minute.” NASAspaceflight.com has a […]
With 1,806 launches to its credit, the most recent a military satellite launched from Plesetsk on June 7th, the Russian Soyuz remains in a class all by itself. In all likelihood it will remain that way. Anatoly Zak reports on Russianspaceweb.com today that engineers at Tsskb Progress in Samara, which manufactures the Soyuz booster, are […]
Swiss Space Systems has signed an agreement with Thales Alenia Space to develop the pressurized compartment for its air launched SOAR (Sub-Orbital Aircraft Reusable space plane announced in March. SOAR is intended to be primarily employed as reusable second stage for launching small satellites, but S3 is also seeking to enter the suborbital research and tourism market with a pressurized compartment which can […]
A Future in Space Operations presentation earlier this week by Dan Adamo, which can be found here, highlights a potential serious problem with NASA’s proposed asteroid capture mission. The presentation focuses on a “V” plot which shows a range of Near Earth Asteroids grouped into three different classes by their orbital characteristics. Some NEAs falling within […]
What was already likely to not be a very happy week at United Launch Alliance just got a whole lot worse. Only a day after SpaceX entered into an agreement with the Air Force to begin the process of qualifying its boosters for EELV business, Reuters is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission is opening an […]
The U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center announced yesterday that it has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Space Exploration Technologies Corp., paving the way for the company to take the next steps along the pathway to entering the EELV business as outlined in the New Entrants Certification Guide which was introduced in October 2011. […]
Source: Xinhuanet.com China’s Shenzhou-10 mission lifted off successfully this morning at 5:38 a.m. EDT, (5:38 p.m. local) sending the crew of three on what is expected to be a 40 hour rendezvous with the awaiting Tiangong-1 space station. During what the Chinese space agency has described as an “applications oriented flight,” the astronauts will conduct both a manual and an automatic docking […]
Coming right on the heels of a two-day summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and American President Barack Obama, China has announced the imminent launch of its next crewed spaceflight mission, scheduled for 5:38 p.m Beijing time, 5:38 a.m. EDT, from the Jiuquan Launch Center. The three person crew of the Shenzhou-10 mission consists of Nie Haisheng, who […]
If you’ve ever been to Key West, you probably visited Mallory Square docks around sunset to look for the elusive “Green Flash” on the western horizon. It is a beautiful sight to be sure, but for space exploration enthusiasts, it perhaps pales in comparison to another green flash, that emitted by the tea-tab ignition which marks the […]
It has been an interesting couple of weeks for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and what appears to be the growing trend among high profile celebrities to sign up for flights aboard the V.S.S. Enterprise. Two weeks ago a Russian businessman reportedly paid the equivalent of $1.5 million at a benefit auction for the right to share a flight with Leonardo […]
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