Following another delay in selecting winners for the second round of its Commercial Resupply Program (CRS2), NASA has ordered two more Cygnus cargo missions from Orbital ATK (SpaceNews). That order raises the total number of missions from eight in the original $1.9 billion dollar to ten. Terms of the two order extension have not been […]
The SpaceX CRS-7 cargo mission to the International Space Station has been moved from Friday to Sunday, June 28th with a new liftoff time of 10:21 AM EDT from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40. If liftoff, which must take place exactly on time, is delayed for any reason, a backup slot on Monday the 29th is reserved. […]
NASA announced late yesterday that it has issued the first task orders for crew rotation flights under its Commercial Crew program. The order went to Boeing, but as the press release included below makes clear, that does not necessarily mean the first flight will go to Boeing as well. In parsing previous statements, the agency […]
In case you missed it, last week SpaceX released new camera footage from its successful May 6th Pad Abort Test of the Commercial Crew version of the Dragon spacecraft.
Dragon at Sunrise / Image credit NASA Update: The Dragon departed ISS on time this morning at 6:04 AM CDT as it was 250 miles over the southern coast of Australia. The SpaceX CRS-6 Dragon capsule is set to return from the International Space Station tomorrow morning, Thursday, May 21st. NASA television will provide coverage […]
4 Frames of Pad Abort Test : Image Credit NASA SpaceX took a major step towards regaining U.S. domestic crew launch capability today with a successful Pad Abort Test of its Commercial Crew Dragon capsule. The test widow was originally scheduled to open at 7:00 AM EDT, but was subsequently moved back two hours to […]
Image Credit: SpaceX NASA and SpaceX held a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center this morning to preview next week’s Pad Abort Test for the Commercial Crew Dragon capsule. SpaceX was represented by V.P. of Mission Assurance Hans Koenigsmann, and NASA by SpaceX Commercial Crew parter manager John Cowart. The test, which had been […]
Liftoff of Progress M-27-M / Image Credit Roscosmos A flurry of reports in Russia new media indicate that yesterday’s launch of the Progress M-27-M resupply freighter to the International Space Station has gone awry, and perhaps badly so. Liftoff took place aboard a Soyuz-2.1a booster from the Baikonour Cosmodome in Kazakhstan at 10:09 AM Moscow […]
SpaceX is counting down to an evening launch of TurkmenistanSat, a Geostationary communications satellite for the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan. Its full name is the tongue numbing TurkmenÄlem52E/MonacoSat. Liftoff of the spacecraft, which was built by Thales Alenia Aerospace and will occupy an orbital slot leased from the Principality of Monoco, is scheduled for […]
Dawn of New Era : KSC Clock Adds Up the Minutes of the First SpaceX Launch to ISS If Project Constellation was the clear victim of President Obama’s Kennedy Space Center address, the immediate beneficiary was without a doubt the International Space Station program. Slated for de-orbit as soon as 2016 in some Constellation planning […]
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