Two interesting Mars related items are taking place this week. On Monday, officials held a ribbon cutting at NASA’s Stennis Space Center to commemorate SpaceX’s conversion of the E-2 stand to test for testing components of its Raptor engine. SpaceX has made bones about the fact that the Raptor methane engine program is specifically geared […]
There were no chocolate bunnies packed aboard, at least according to the official manifest, but astronauts on the International Space Station received a very larger Easter basket this morning in the form of the SpaceX-3 Dragon capsule. After conducting a series of overnight burns which brought it within visual range of the station, the […]
A post launch news conference on today’s SpaceX CRS-3 mission to the International Space Station shed a few key details on the mission itself, as well as the subsequent effort to recover the first stage in the Atlantic ocean. For anyone who viewed the launch, it was difficult to miss the rather odd plume […]
One perplexing item regarding today’s SpaceX CRS-3 launch to ISS, and subsequent first stage landing recovery attempt, was the fact that we had yet to see any flight test of the new F9R test vehicle, with the only released video having been a ground level static fire. It seemed therefore, that even if first stage […]
Image Credit NASA The weather front stretching from north Alabama to nearly the Florida Keys held off to the west today, allowing SpaceX and NASA the window they needed to get the CRS-3 mission safely off the ground and on its way to the International Space Station. Lifting off under cloudy skies at precisely 3:25:22 […]
NASA announced today the discovery of the first Earth sized planet located within the habitable zone of another star. The planet, named Kepler 186F, is orbiting a red dwarf (M) type star approximately 500 light years from Earth. Estimated to be only 10% larger than Earth, Kepler 186F is the outermost planet in a […]
The oft delayed SpaceX CRS-3 launch to ISS has been reset for tomorrow, and a Good Friday launch attempt, one which will hopefully bring a bit more “good” than the previous SES-8 Thanksgiving Day attempt. That flight also resulted in a delay, but ultimately culminated in a flawless first commercial flight to GTO for SpaceX […]
Today’s launch of the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule to the International Space Station has been scrubbed due to a first stage helium leak with almost an hour left in the countdown. Weather was beautiful at Cape Canaveral with light clouds, warm temps and a cooling breeze, and after a 2:30 pm announcement that SpaceX […]
Falcon 9 V1.1 poised for launch. The NASA / SpaceX-3 ressuply mission to the International Space Station is poised for a historic launch out of Cape Canaveral today. Standing on its transporter/erector at SLC-40 the rocket for today’s launch will be the first Falcon 9 v1.1 to launch to station, following three consecutive successful flights […]
At a noon press conference at the Kennedy Space Center today, ISS program manager Mike Suffredini, speaking from via phone, announced that the SpaceX-3 mission will remain on schedule for a Monday launch at 4:58: PM EDT. There had been concerns that the launch would slip due to the failure of a backup computer command […]
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