The International Space Station will see quite a bit of traffic in the next few weeks. Later today, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos will launch to the Station from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff of the Soyuz booster and spacecraft is set for 5:26 PM EDT. (3:26 […]
Talk about going down in flames. Sometimes it seems that NASA has an inappropriate fascination with destroying its own spacecraft. Cassini comes to mind, but there are quite a few other examples, including the four former SSME’s which will power each of the first few SLS launches. See Related: Expending Reusable Engines: A Good Thing? […]
An investor conference call (pdf download) for Orbital ATK which took place on March 1st has shed new, if somewhat puzzling light on Orbital ATK’s plans for a new booster to compete in the USAF’s EELV class against long standing incumbent ULA and recently certified SpaceX. Call it the rebirth of Ares-1, or perhaps of the patriotically […]
The Air Force has made two more awards in an effort to extricate itself from a controversial, and at times baffling American dependence on Russian rocket engines used to boost some of the nation’s most valuable and sensitive payloads into space. Yesterday’s awards, announced by the Space and Missile Systems PAO, went to Aerojet Rocketdyne […]
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 […]
It took a fourth effort to finally loft a ULA Atlas V on its first ever flight to the International Space Station, but after waiting out seemingly endless bad weather, the Orbital ATK / NASA OA-4 mission finally launched on Sunday afternoon. The ULA story is here, and the Orbital ATK mission page is here. […]
Is Russia following a path the American space program could have taken? A story in the Russian news agency TASS outlines a lunar exploration program which seems to draw on many of the lessons recently learned, but not applied by NASA for its own “Journey to Mars.” The program, which has yet to be funded, […]
Reflecting what appears to be a state of increasing desperation, Aerojet Rocketdyne is not giving up on its bid for United Launch Alliance just yet. Reuters reports that after having seen its $2 billion offer rejected in a 2 sentence e-mail, Aerojet has hired outside consultants who may suggest upping the offer, or in the […]
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 […]
Recent Comments