Russia may soon need its own trampoline. Overnight, a Russian Proton-M booster lifted off from Baikonur carrying the Express AM4R communications satellite built by EADS Astrium. Like all too many Proton payloads in recent years, it did not reach the correct orbit, or in this case, any orbit at all. Instead it suffered a complete […]
Credit : Getty Images SpaceX has released the following media advisory; “Elon Musk will make an important SpaceX announcement today, Friday, April 25th at 1:00PM ET at The National Press Club” Given the deafening silence coming from SpaceX after tweets from Elon Musk last Friday that the Falcon 9 first stage on the CRS-3 mission […]
Artists concept of the Ariane VI Two related items in Space News point to the growing conundrum facing Arianespace as it attempts to devise a strategy for combating the emergence of SpaceX and the Falcon 9. After repeatedly downplaying any impact from SpaceX (and generally dissing the company, its rocket and its founder) during much of […]
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 […]
An Aviation Week blog interview with Elon Musk sheds a little more light on the Falcon 9’s commercial performance and how it will affected by first stage re-usability. From the interview: “Where I basically see this netting out is Falcon 9 will do satellites up to roughly 3.5 tonnes, with full reusability of the boost […]
When Dennis Tito went to Washington last fall to lobby Congress to engage NASA in his Inspiration Mars concept for the 2018 crewed flyby of the Red Planet, the reception was cool at best. Hoping to salvage something from the idea, which had started off as a private mission concept using commercial hardware but quickly […]
For nearly 15 years. the large ComSat launch market has been dominated by three companies; Arianespace, which operates the market leading Ariane V, International Launch Services of Reston, Va., which markets the Russian built Proton heavy lift rocket, and Sea Launch, which operates the Ukraine/Russian Zenit-3SL. Although the Proton has certainly had its share of […]
Update: As the original version of this story suggested, SES did not book a Falcon Heavy. Leading satellite Comsat operator SES announced today that it has awarded a construction contract for its SES-10 satellite to Airbus Defense and Space, previously known as Astrium. Of greater interest however, is the fact that the 5,300 kg […]
A little over a month after launching the SES-8 satellite on its first ever geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) mission, and its inaugural launch from Cape Canaveral, a second Falcon 9 V1.1 is poised for a liftoff on Monday. It will kick off what promises to be a year like none other for the Hawthorne, California […]
Yesterday’s announcement that SpaceX will be conducting engine testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi has provided a bit more insight into the company’s future plans, as well as its steadily evolving business savvy. For those who follow the technology, the announcement is one of the first pieces of publicly released information regarding the […]
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