Although today’s SpaceX press conference was held primarily to announce a lawsuit filed to stop the Air Force/ULA block buy, it also shed quite a bit more light onto last Friday’s soft landing of the Falcon 9 first stage. To sum it up, in the words of Chief Brody “You’re going to need a bigger […]
A post launch news conference on today’s SpaceX CRS-3 mission to the International Space Station shed a few key details on the mission itself, as well as the subsequent effort to recover the first stage in the Atlantic ocean. For anyone who viewed the launch, it was difficult to miss the rather odd plume […]
One perplexing item regarding today’s SpaceX CRS-3 launch to ISS, and subsequent first stage landing recovery attempt, was the fact that we had yet to see any flight test of the new F9R test vehicle, with the only released video having been a ground level static fire. It seemed therefore, that even if first stage […]
Image Credit NASA The weather front stretching from north Alabama to nearly the Florida Keys held off to the west today, allowing SpaceX and NASA the window they needed to get the CRS-3 mission safely off the ground and on its way to the International Space Station. Lifting off under cloudy skies at precisely 3:25:22 […]
Falcon 9 V1.1 poised for launch. The NASA / SpaceX-3 ressuply mission to the International Space Station is poised for a historic launch out of Cape Canaveral today. Standing on its transporter/erector at SLC-40 the rocket for today’s launch will be the first Falcon 9 v1.1 to launch to station, following three consecutive successful flights […]
Image Credit: Virgin Galactic If 2014 really is the year the commercial suborbital industry finally takes off, one NASA program is ready to take advantage of the opportunity and help it gain altitude. It is the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program, which originally began in 2009 as the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research program. Since then, it […]
JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, announced today that it has selected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to develop Japan’s next generation, flagship launch vehicle. From the official announcement: “The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) made an announcement to the private sector on February 27, 2014, to compare their proposals and select a prime contractor who can […]
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 […]
Swiss Space Systems, the European startup which began operations just over a year ago with plans for an airplane launched, two-stage partially reusable space launch system, was at Cape Canaveral Friday to announce an agreement enabling zero-g, parabolic flights starting in 2015. The announcement, which was made after negotiations with Space Florida, will see a […]
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 […]
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