Tag: Arianespace

“Once again, Ariane 5’s unmatched reliability and availability has set the highest standards in the satellite launch business.” – comments by Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel upon Arianespace’s 70th launch for the Ariane V, and its 56th successful launch in a row. Yesterday’s launch of the Ariane V ECA  took place at 4:54 pm local time […]

Posted in: Arianespace
Proton Disaster

Proton Disaster

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 […]

Posted in: Russian Space
Two Continents, Two Launches, Two Hours

Two Continents, Two Launches, Two Hours

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 […]

Commercial Soyuz Ready for Liftoff

Commercial Soyuz Ready for Liftoff

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 […]

SpaceX Conducts New Test

SpaceX Conducts New Test

Although there has been no official word from SpaceX, nor even a tweet from Elon Musk,  according to Wacotrib.com Space X apparently conducted another moderately long duration test of the Falcon 9-R Wednesday evening.   It is unclear just how long the test lasted with witnesses saying it was “about a minute.”  NASAspaceflight.com has a […]

Perfect Liftoff for Ariane V

Perfect Liftoff for Ariane V

The latest resupply mission to the International Space Station got off to a perfect start yesterday evening with the launch of an Ariane V rocket carrying the Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV-4, “Albert Einstein.” There is one more ATV planned for ISS, after which the European Space Agency will supply a modified version of the propulsion […]

ATV “Albert Einstein” Poised for Liftoff

ATV “Albert Einstein” Poised for Liftoff

The countdown is underway at Kourou, French Guiana for this evening’s launch of the European ATV supply ship  “Albert Einstein” to the International Space Station.  Launch is scheduled aboard the Ariane V booster at precisely 6:52:11 p.m. local (5:52:11 p.m. US EDT.)  Today’s launch will mark the fourth flight of the Automated Transfer Vehicle, and the heaviest […]

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 […]

Humans 2 Mars Wrap Up

Humans 2 Mars Wrap Up

The Humans2Mars Summit  in Washington D.C. wrapped up today,  and almost all of the proceedings recorded on Livestream, either already are,  or will be,  posted on the ExploreMars.Org website, and are certainly worth a look. A couple of points stand out. One:    Dr. John Logdson noted a distinction in the current program of record which was introduced as NASA’s […]

Vega Scores a Perfect Second Flight

Vega Scores a Perfect Second Flight

Arianespace Press Release: Second Vega launch by Arianespace a success: Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1 in orbit Kourou, May 7, 2013 On Monday, May 6, 2013 at 11:06 pm local time in French Guiana, Arianespace successfully launched the second Vega rocket from the Guiana space Center (CSG), orbiting the Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1 satellites. Second successful […]

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