After a near two year stand down while the launch pad was repaired and the rocket was retooled, Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket made a triumphant return to flight Monday evening. Liftoff from Pad OA at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport took place at 7:45 PM EDT, as the booster lofted a Cygnus cargo vehicle loaded with […]
Update from NASA: Today’s launch of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket is postponed 24 hours due to a ground support equipment (GSE) cable that did not perform as expected during the pre-launch check out. We have spares on hand and rework procedures are in process. The Antares and Cygnus teams are not currently working any […]
Buried by the coverage of yesterday’s explosion of a SpaceX Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral was the somewhat unexpected announcement that Ukraine’s Yuzhnoye Design Office is moving rapidly towards establishing a commercial launch operation for its Cyclone 4 rocket in North America. According to the press release, which is included below, the Cyclone 4 would […]
An appearance by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell at the Satellite 2016 conference being held in National Harbor, Maryland is shedding a wealth of new information regarding the company’s plans for the remainder of 2016, including a some interesting insight into what it might charge for a re-flight of previously flown Falcon 9 first stage. According […]
It could be an exciting second half of the week for several aerospace companies. After three delays for unspecified reasons, NASA may finally be ready to announce the winners of its Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract for ongoing supply of the International Space Station. Industry analyst Charles Lurio is suggesting the awards could come as […]
Two NASA reports released late this week bring to mind the old adage “we don’t know what we don’t know.” The first concerns the explosion of an Orbital Sciences, (now Orbital ATK ) Antares booster carrying a Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station on October 28th 2014. One year later, a NASA Independent […]
NASA’s Office of Inspector General has released a report regarding the agency’s response to Orbital Sciences’ October 28th, 2014 failure of an Antares booster launching the Orb-3 ISS re-supply mission. The full report can be found here, and is an interesting read. Like most NASA OIG reports, it is clearly written and contains a great […]
The twin failures of both the Orbital Sciences Antares and SpaceX Falcon launch vehicles have made for a challenging 10 months for NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program, a period further complicated by the loss of a Russian Progress cargo ship between the two U.S. accidents. At the same time, the program’s core philosophy of […]
Correction: A Russian Progress is scheduled to launch to ISS on July 3rd Original story: Many had hoped it would prove to be a day that changed space history forever. Instead, it offered a major launch failure for SpaceX and its Falcon 9 booster, and the sudden realization for NASA that it now faces a significant […]
SpaceX is set to launch its 7th Commercial Resupply mission to the International Space Station on June 28th, but based on a notice posted by NASA last Friday, it may be adding at least for more missions to the count through an extension which would see the original contract run through 2018. Fellow supplier Orbital-ATK, […]
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