A Saturday pre-launch press conference for Sunday’s liftoff of the Deep Space Climate Observatory or DSCOVR spacecraft, revealed new details regarding SpaceX’s second attempt to land a Falcon 9 first stage on its seagoing platform. One fact seems clear, this attempt will be more difficult than the last. It may be also be a harbinger […]
With the successful completion of a static test fire, the stage is now set for a SpaceX Falcon 9 to launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft on the evening of Sunday, February 8th. Liftoff must take place in an instantaneous window occurring at 6:10 PM EST. If needed, a backup date is reserved […]
On December 19th, NASA awarded the launch contract for the 2016 Mars Insight Mission to United Launch Alliance, to be carried out aboard an Atlas V 401, for $160 million. The award is interesting for a number of reasons. In the first place, ULA does not like to reveal its launch prices if there any […]
Only slightly less miserable than the weather in the Northeast as a result of hurricane Sandy is the abysmal state of the nation’s weather satellite programs which are charged with tracking such occurrences. As Marcia Smith points out at spacepolicyonline, one impact Sandy is having is to focus some media attention on the fact that the U.S. is facing a potential gap in coverage from both polar and […]
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