Following last week’s finding by a Federal Judge that the absence of any proof that sanctioned Russian Defense and Space minister Dimitry Rogozin was benefiting from the sale of RD-180’s was good enough to lift a temporary injunction against further purchases, it might have looked as if the issue was reverting back to the […]
The Proton, Russia’s largest booster, continued its successful entry into 2014 with the March 16 launch of two communications satellites. Liftoff out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan took place at 3:08 am Moscow time, (7:08 pm EDT) and the Breeze M upper stage placed the Express AT-1 and Express AT-2 satellites into geostationary orbit […]
Shortly before a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy booster lifted off from Vandenberg AFB yesterday, spacepolicyonline relayed a report from the Russian newspaper Izvestia suggesting that Vladimir Putin’s government is considering terminating the agreement which allows the United States to import the RD-180 main engine which powers the ULA Atlas V booster. Although critics […]
Russianspaceweb.com reports today that an examination of debris from the July 2nd Proton accident strongly suggests that the vehicle’s angular velocity sensors were installed incorrectly, (upside down) causing the rocket to react to erroneous readings and swing wildly in an attempt to correct them. If the report is confirmed, it may be a source of greater concern than […]
After a difficult two-year span which had seen a surprising number of failures in the Russian launch industry, things appeared to be getting back on track in 2013. Until today. Within a few seconds of liftoff at 8:38 a.m. local time, (10:38 p.m. EDT Monday July 1) a Russian Proton-M booster carrying 3 Glonass (GPS) satellites began oscillating, exhibiting a loss of […]
In a setting straight out of a Bond movie, or Star Trek : First Contact, in a remote setting, a long dormant missile silo opened its massive protective steel door yesterday, making way for the launch of a missile designed to carry nuclear destruction on global scale. Moments later, it was on the way to its destination. On […]
The Soyuz Booster recorded its 1807th and 1808th successful launches in short order yesterday. At 1:28 p.m. EDT, (9:28 p.m. local) a Soyuz 2-1b blasted off from Baikonur carrying the Resource-P Russian remote sensing satellite. Two hours later, at 3:27 p.m. EDT, and half a world away, another Soyuz, this one equipped with a Fregat restartable upper stage, lifted off from the […]
Update: Today’s launch has been scrubbed due to high winds. A commercial Soyuz booster is ready for liftoff today out of the Guiana Space Center in South America at 2:53 p.m. (3:53) local carrying four 03b communications satellites. Today’s launch marks the inauguration of a new network of satellites built by Thales Alenia, operating out of medium Earth orbit at an altitude of […]
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 […]
Source : RIA Novosti After a seemingly endless development program stretching back into the 1990’s, the first booster in a long anticipated family of new Russian launch vehicles has completed testing and is being prepared to ship to the northern spaceport of Plesetsk. It will still be some time before launch however, as the Angara “light” is […]
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