SpaceX is counting down to an evening launch of TurkmenistanSat, a Geostationary communications satellite for the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan. Its full name is the tongue numbing TurkmenÄlem52E/MonacoSat. Liftoff of the spacecraft, which was built by Thales Alenia Aerospace and will occupy an orbital slot leased from the Principality of Monoco, is scheduled for […]
Image Credit: SpaceX After first tweeting and then deleting, SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed Saturday night that slow response from a thruster valves was the cause of last week’s close but no cigar effort at landing a Falcon 9 first stage at sea. Cause of hard rocket landing confirmed as due to slower than expected […]
Video of the landing attempt shot from the ASDS Just Read The Instructions was posted anonymously on vidme. A YouTube version is included below. While it is perhaps silly to attribute human or even animal characteristics to mechanical hardware which is just doing its job, there is something poignant about how hard the cold gas […]
Liftoff of CRS-6 / Image Credit: Stewart Money After a Monday scrub, the second launch attempt for NASA /SpaceX’s CRS-6 resupply mission to the International Space Station found brilliant blue skies punctuated by occasional clouds and absolutely no technical problems as it counted down to T-0. Lifting off the pad at SLC-40, the Falcon 9 […]
For most of the afternoon, it looked as if a steady breeze coming off the Atlantic Ocean would keep a series of storms away from Cape Canaveral and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sitting on the pad at SLC-40. And for a while, they did, as SpaceX made it to three minutes remaining in an […]
Update: Whether he is sandbagging, or really just wanted to clarify, SpaceX founder Elon Musk used Twitter to correct media reports (including this one) that cited the odds of successful first stage landing at 75-80%. \ Odds of rocket landing successfully today are still less than 50%. The 80% figure by end of year is […]
As NASA and SpaceX are counting down to the planned 4:33 PM EDT CRS-6 cargo flight to the International Space Station on Monday, April 13th., United Launch Alliance is counting down to a press conference introducing its new rocket which will be held at nearly the same time. The ULA press conference at which President […]
CRS-5 Dragon Awaits Launch : Image Credit S. Money SpaceX’s next launch, the CRS-6 re-supply mission to the International Space Station, has been moved to Monday, April 13th at 4:33 PM EDT. It has previously been listed as “No Earlier Than” (NET) April 10th on NASA’s launch calendar. No explanation has been given for the […]
Delta Heavy / Image Credit United Launch Alliance An Innerspace Editorial: In what seems to be becoming something of an annual affair, it was SpaceX versus United Launch Alliance Round earlier this week in Washington D.C. Last year, SpaceX’s Elon Musk and ULA’s Michael Gass squared off against each other in a highly contentious Senate […]
SpaceX has received what appears to be good news in its challenge of Blue Origin’s patent for a landing a launch vehicle first stage on a barge. The challenge came in the form of an Inter Partes review, a proceeding in which a petitioner can ask for all or parts of a patent to be […]
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