A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in its 551 configuration, boosted the U.S. Navy MUOS comsat to orbit this morning. Liftoff of the most powerful version of Atlas rocket, with a 5 meter fairing and five strap on solid rocket boosters was briefly delayed due to high winds, but ultimately lifted off at 9:00 am EST […]
After a difficult two-year span which had seen a surprising number of failures in the Russian launch industry, things appeared to be getting back on track in 2013. Until today. Within a few seconds of liftoff at 8:38 a.m. local time, (10:38 p.m. EDT Monday July 1) a Russian Proton-M booster carrying 3 Glonass (GPS) satellites began oscillating, exhibiting a loss of […]
What was already likely to not be a very happy week at United Launch Alliance just got a whole lot worse. Only a day after SpaceX entered into an agreement with the Air Force to begin the process of qualifying its boosters for EELV business, Reuters is reporting that the Federal Trade Commission is opening an […]
Source : RIA Novosti After a seemingly endless development program stretching back into the 1990’s, the first booster in a long anticipated family of new Russian launch vehicles has completed testing and is being prepared to ship to the northern spaceport of Plesetsk. It will still be some time before launch however, as the Angara “light” is […]
Sea Launch A G suffered a major, and possibly crippling setback in efforts to regain a meaningful market position in the early hours of Friday morning (EST) when its Zenit 3-SL launch vehicle veered off its course immediately following liftoff. 50 seconds later, the main engine shut down, terminating thrust and sending the rocket and its Intelsat -27 payload […]
Powered by its Russian built RD-180 main engine, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 launched NASA’s TDRS-K communications satellite into orbit Wednesday evening, in a picture perfect liftoff from Cape Canaveral. The 401, which is the simplest version of the booster, departed right on time at 8:48 PM EST, ultimately placing the Boeing built satellite into a geosynchronous transfer […]
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