Earlier this week, the NASA Office of Inspector General released a report, found here, titled NASA’s Efforts to Maximize Research on the International Space Station. The report itself , like most NASA OIG reports is very well written and provides excellent background information on the subject. For anyone interested in the approach to science being performed […]
The Soyuz Booster recorded its 1807th and 1808th successful launches in short order yesterday. At 1:28 p.m. EDT, (9:28 p.m. local) a Soyuz 2-1b blasted off from Baikonur carrying the Resource-P Russian remote sensing satellite. Two hours later, at 3:27 p.m. EDT, and half a world away, another Soyuz, this one equipped with a Fregat restartable upper stage, lifted off from the […]
Update: Today’s launch has been scrubbed due to high winds. A commercial Soyuz booster is ready for liftoff today out of the Guiana Space Center in South America at 2:53 p.m. (3:53) local carrying four 03b communications satellites. Today’s launch marks the inauguration of a new network of satellites built by Thales Alenia, operating out of medium Earth orbit at an altitude of […]
With 1,806 launches to its credit, the most recent a military satellite launched from Plesetsk on June 7th, the Russian Soyuz remains in a class all by itself. In all likelihood it will remain that way. Anatoly Zak reports on Russianspaceweb.com today that engineers at Tsskb Progress in Samara, which manufactures the Soyuz booster, are […]
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 […]
Canadian astronaut and Commander of Expedition 35 Chris Hadfield, is preparing to return to Earth this evening, along with fellow travelers American Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko. Undocking is scheduled at 7:08 p.m. EDT, with de-orbit burn occurring at 9:37 and landing in Kazakhstan at 10:31 p.m. (8:31 a.m. local) This “expedition” may be one for the record books. Chris Hadfield has […]
NASA today signed an agreement with Russia to extend the current arrangement for U.S. crew flights aboard Soyuz into 2017. The full press release, included below, is noteworthy in that it calls for crew return, as well as rescue capability, but not necessarily crew transport to the station, through Jun 2017. This represents perhaps the last hopeful […]
Source : RIA Novosti Extending a record which is no danger of being broken any time soon, the Russian Soyuz made the 1803rd successful launch of incredible career today, carrying a GLONASS navigation satellite into orbit from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the far north. GLONASS is the Russian counterpart to American GPS, and like GPS it is a dual use system for both […]
Anatoly Zak has an interesting story about Russia’s planned successor to the Soyuz crew capsule on his site Russianspaceweb.com, and as usual it provides a wealth of information. What is particularly intriguing about new spacecraft, labelled PTK NK, is the fact it is currently being designed to make propulsive landings much like the SpaceX Dragon, which it somewhat resembles. One key […]
If some have accused the goals of the U.S. space program of attempting to repeat what it accomplished in the 1960’s, they may be equally unenthused over Russia’s latest launch. In what is generally accepted as the 1,802 nd successful flight of the Soyuz booster, Russia today lofted the Bion-1M biological research satellite. Containing 45 mice, 8 gerbils and 8 geckos, as well […]
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