Update 3: After counting down through cloudy skies, today’s flight was delayed until Thursday. SpaceX provided two updates, the first on Twitter and the second on the company website. Team opting to hold launch for today. Looking to try again tomorrow; window also opens at 6:46pm ET. Rocket and spacecraft remain healthy. — SpaceX […]
President Calvin Coolidge famously once said, “the chief business of the American people, is business.” Actually the full quote, made during an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925, was “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in […]
For many of who take pride in NASA, it is embarrassing enough that the agency which once went to the Moon, and now says it is on a “Journey to Mars” has as its only defined human exploration goal, the Asteroid Redirect Mission. ARM’s objective, radically reduced from the original 2010 proposal of sending astronauts to […]
The nascent suborbital space tourism industry suffered a major blow on October 31st, 2014, when Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise was lost in a mid-air breakup over the Mojave desert during a powered test flight. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed, and pilot Michael Siebold was badly injured. With the company already years behind schedule in the […]
NASA’s Commercial Crew partners Boeing and SpaceX are continuing to make progress in testing their respective systems for flights which will begin next year. Yesterday, NASA’s featured image came from a drop test of Boeing’s Starliner capsule conducted at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test, which took place in the facility’s 2o’ […]
The Indian space program was on display yesterday at the week long “Make In India” event being held in Mumbai to highlight that nation’s transition into a rising technological and economic powerhouse. ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization took the opportunity meet with suppliers in conjunction with its plans to largely privatize operations of its […]
For a brief period in the 1990’s, Solar Thermal Propulsion appeared to be on the cusp of becoming the next big thing in space technology. While that obviously has not happened yet, a recent NASA Future in Space Operations (FISO) presentation from Marshall Space Flight Center suggests it may still be an approach whose time […]
Overnight Japan lofted the ASTRO-H X-Ray Observatory into Low Earth Orbit. As is the custom, the spacecraft was given an additional name, “Hitomi” to go along with the formal designation. Hitomi literally means the pupil of the eye, or aperture, in Japanese, but also connotes a broader meaning of the wisdom or insight which can […]
Cubesat manufacturers and operators are beginning to align with the emerging class of new small launch vehicles which were designed to service the booming market for tiny spacecraft. New Zealand based Rocket Lab, which introduced on-line booking late last year, has announced that it has signed a launch contract with San Francisco based Spire, which […]
SpaceX is continuing to feel the effects of last year’s Falcon failure on the NASA/CRS-7 resupply flight to the International Space Station. Following a return to flight and a successful debut for the Falcon 9 Full Thrust as part of the Orbcomm OG-2 mission on December 21st, 2015, SpaceX launched the Jason-3 ocean monitoring satellite […]
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