Following its early Saturday morning launch, the SpaceX CRS-5 Dragon capsule made its way to the International Space Station where it was “captured” a 5:54 AM EST as the orbiting complex sailed high above the Mediterranean Sea. Operating the Station’s Canadarm 2 robotic arm and grapple were Expedition 42 Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore (NASA) and […]
Here Be Dragons: The Rise of SpaceX and the Pursuit of Mars is an in-depth history of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation and the Falcon 9/Dragon system which just won NASA’s Commercial Crew award to return human spaceflight capacity to the United States. It is much more than that however. SpaceX was founded with the Red […]
NASA’s Office of Inspector General released a report yesterday outlining several issues facing NASA as it seeks to extent the operating life of the International Space Station from current threshold of 2020, until at least 2024. The good news is that there are no outstanding technical issues which seriously threaten the ability to keep the […]
Image Credit: NASA TV The last of five European Space Agency ATV’s docked with the International Space Station earlier today. One has to wonder whether Europe will ultimately regret terminating the ATV production line in favor of supporting NASA’s Space Launch System by providing a service module for the first and likely second SLS/Orion missions […]
From NASA: The next trio of crew members destined for the International Space Station is now looking forward to a Thursday arrival at the orbiting laboratory after their Soyuz spacecraft was unable to complete its third thruster burn to fine-tune its approach. Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Oleg Artemyev of the Russian […]
Image Credit: NASA Today finds two launch vehicles and two capsules at their respective pads waiting for blast-off to the International Space Station. First up is the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, scheduled to launch expedition 39 at 5:17 pm EDT today. The crew consists of Oleg Artemyev, Alexander Skvortsov, and Steve Swanson. […]
It’s difficult to say exactly why this confluence of events occurred, but space exploration’s really good media week continues Friday evening at 8 p.m. EDT with the global premier of National Geographic’s “Live from Space” broadcast event. Over the course of the two hour show, which will include video from a single 90 minute orbit, […]
Although they are not going up on the next flight, a GenCorp press release details the plan for qualifying and installing entirely new batteries for the International Space Station. As the largest solar power platform in orbit, generating up to 90 kilowatts of power, the International Space Station itself is a living laboratory for testing […]
Some good news regarding ISS comes up in a Spacepolicyonline report of a briefing yesterday provided by Bill Gerstenmaier, Head of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations(HEO) Mission Directorate to a NASA Advisory Council Subcommittee. In looking ahead to what comes after ISS, Gerstenmair observed: ““I don’t think there’ll be another government-sponsored space station.”” Instead, “He […]
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