A recent KSC launch award to Orbital Sciences Corporation for a 2016 mission highlights just how expensive the Pegasus booster, once hailed as revolutionary, has become. The $55 million order for the air launched Pegasus for the CYGNSS mission is nearly what SpaceX is charging a commercial customer for the EELV class Falcon 9, […]
RD-180 What exquisite timing. In a week where the Russian built RD-180 main engine, used to power the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, has come under heavy scrutiny, word comes out that Orbital Sciences has dropped its lawsuit against ULA over access to the engine. From a Space News article on the issue: “The parties […]
Orbital Sciences Press Release ORBITAL SIGNS LAUNCH AGREEMENT WITH SKYBOX IMAGING — Company to Launch Six Commercial High-Resolution Imaging Spacecraft for New Customer Aboard Commercial Version of Minotaur Rocket in Late 2015 — (Dulles, VA 20 February 2014) – Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB), one of the world’s leading space technology companies, today announced that […]
From NASA.Gov Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft, which delivered nearly one-and-a-half tons of supplies and scientific equipment to the International Space Station in January, completed its first commercial cargo mission to the orbiting laboratory Tuesday. NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, with assistance from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, used the station’s 57-foot Canadarm2 robotic […]
Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket lifted off precisely on time, at 1:07 p.m. EST today, carrying the company’s Cygnus cargo vessel. Following a flawless liftoff, Cygnus was released from the second stage, deploying its solar panels a few moments later. With today’s launch, OSC has now completed three successful flights of the two stage, liquid […]
Displaying a some ironic sense of timing regarding his faith in the federal government’s ability to put together complex programs in a short time frame, the world’s first space tourist and founder of Inspiration Mars, Dennis Tito went to Washington yesterday, where in a prepared statement, he essentially asked NASA to assume Inspiration Mars concept […]
Orbital Sciences Corporation’s really good year kept rolling Tuesday evening with the 8:15 p.m. EST flight of a Minotaur 1 rocket out of the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport. Orbital’s next launch, and the culmination of what will be a breakout year for the company, will be its first under NASA’s CRS program. That mission is […]
At 6:31 AM CDT, astronauts aboard the International Space Station released Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo vessel which has been berthed to the orbiting facility’s Harmony module for the last 23 days. Having been filled with trash and sent on its way, the Cygnus will enter Earth’s upper atmosphere in a destructive re-entry on Wednesday. With […]
It began with a historic berthing in LEO, and ended with the successful return to flight of a troubled booster steeped in anachronism. And right in the middle, the future emerged on a pillar of fire piercing a blue Pacific sky. To begin at the ending, the oft troubled Proton booster returned to flight Sunday […]
A busy, and unusually significant September launch schedule got underway Saturday at 4:05 p.m. EDT with the liftoff of a Land Launch Zenit-3SLB booster from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Carrying the 9,500 lb. AMOS-4 communications satellite, Israel’s largest Comsat so far, to a GTO, the successful launch marked a return to flight for […]
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