Soyuz

Will Soyuz Beat Orion Around the Moon?

Will Soyuz Beat Orion Around the Moon?

On June 3rd, the Moscow Times reported on a new development in Space Adventure’s plan to launch two tourists on a voyage around the Moon.  Having scored notable success as the first and only company to arrange tourist, or “space flight participant” trips to the International Space Station, Space Adventures has been promoting the lunar […]

Posted in: Soyuz, Space Tourism
Stratolaunch and OSC

Stratolaunch and OSC

Stratolaunch announced yesterday that following a 9 month courtship, it is entering into a development arrangement with Orbital Sciences Corporation to secure the booster for the behemoth, twin boomed aircraft currently being built by Scaled Composites at Mojave. NBC News Science Editor Alan Boyle shed a little more light on the arrangement yesterday on his […]

7 Hours 52 Minutes

7 Hours 52 Minutes

Seven hours and fifty minutes after a flawless liftoff from Baikonur at 2:42 AM Friday morning (local),  the three person crew aboard Expedition 35’s Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft opened the spacecraft’s hatch and entered the International Space Stations’s Poisk module.  The new record breaking fast ascent, which was accomplished in four orbits,  had been employed on three previous Progress resupply missions but this […]

Posted in: Soyuz, Space Stations
ISS Expedition 33 Lands Safely in Kazakhstan

ISS Expedition 33 Lands Safely in Kazakhstan

At 7:56 PM CST, 7:56 AM Local time on Nov 19th,  the Soyuz Capsule containing ISS Expedition Crew members Yuri Malechenko, Sunita Williams and  Akihiko Hoshide returned to Earth 52 miles NE of the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan.  The somewhat inelegant, but very typical Soyuz landing saw the capsule come to a rest on its side, in freezing conditions on a steppe […]

Posted in: NASA, Soyuz
Sticking the Landing

Sticking the Landing

Video of SpaceX Dragon capsule  landing yesterday.  Tweeted by SpaceX, this video shot from a recovery boat, underscores the accuracy of the Dragon’s re-entry and landing profile. With a splashdown nearly on top of the waiting recovery team,  SpaceX demonstrated an accuracy that is sometime elusive in Russian Soyuz capsule’s 25 miles landing ellipse. As long time Russian space industry analyst James Oberg  has pointed […]

Posted in: NASA, Soyuz, SpaceX
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