The advent of fully reusable launch systems took another partial step forward with last Thursday’s liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B space plane, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle. The mission, dubbed OTV-V, was the fifth launch overall for the fleet of two unmanned spacecraft, with the first […]
KSC Director Robert Cabana Addresses the Media on the “21st Century Spaceport” Addressing the concerns of his audience at the Kennedy Space Center on April 15th 2010, President Obama sought to assure NASA and contract employees that the changes his administration was about to institute; cancelling Project Constellation, maintaining ISS, greenlighting Commercial Crew, and setting […]
Image Credit USAF Concluding its longest mission to date, the U.S. Air Force X-37B space plane returned to Earth on Friday, Here is the full Air Force Press Release: Release Number: 041014 10/17/2014 – VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle mission 3 (OTV-3), the Air Force’s unmanned, reusable space plane, […]
Tuesday’s launch of a Atlas V rocket carrying the X-37B unmanned orbital space plane marked an interesting development in the gradual progression of reusable space flight capability. In the first place, it represented a return to flight of the RL-10 upper stage engine following an October Delta IV launch “anomaly” in which an underperfoming engine led to a longer than planned […]
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