SpaceX is now aiming for a Sunday launch of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket.
A test flight of SpaceShipTwo was scrubbed today because of weather.
What made this particular test flight interesting is that about three hundred of Virgin Galactic’s space tourist customers had been invited to Mohave to watch it. More info here.
A Soyuz rocket successfully launched three astronauts today for a six month mission to ISS.
They plan to dock later today, thereby clearing the way for the Cygnus berthing this weekend.
The competition heats up: China today unveiled its first unmanned lunar rover, set for a December launch, and announced a competition for the public to name it.
Opportunity knocks: A new delay in the launch of a Russian weather satellite illustrates the need that small satellite owners have for their own rocket.
The planned mid-December launch of a Russian Soyuz/Fregat rocket carrying a Russian weather satellite and a half-dozen small satellites for British, Norwegian and Canadian customers has been delayed again, to late February, following the latest series of issues with the main satellite payload, industry officials said. The delay, which is not the first for this launch, illustrates the immutable reality confronted by owners of small satellites manifested as secondary payloads: You launch at the convenience of the principal passenger, and not before.
If there was a small rocket available for these small satellites, not only would they flock to it, the number of small satellite customers would probably skyrocket, as the only thing preventing the funding of many nanosats is the lack of the launcher.
On another note, the technical delays for this Russian satellite and its rocket once again highlight the quality control problems within the Russian aerospace industry.
The competition heats up: China today successfully launched a brand new quick response rocket.
Very little is known about the Kuaizhou rocket, other than it was developed by CASIC. No photos or graphics exist in the public domain. It is also known the rocket – likely on its test flight – was carrying a satellite, called Kuaizhou-1. Built by the Harbin Institute of Technology, the new satellite will be used for emergency data monitoring and imaging, under the control of the national remote sensing center at the national Academy of Sciences. The new satellite is probably part of a “quick response satellite system” model that was already announced as in the works by the Chinese.
The rocket appears to be fueled entirely by solid rocket motors. Thus, they could build a bunch and have them in storage, ready to go at any time.
The competition heats up: China announced today that it plans to hold the launch cost of its Long March rockets at $70 million per launch.
Until Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., arrived on the scene with advertised launch prices that bested even those of the Chinese, the Long March was considered the low-cost option among providers of rockets carrying satellites to geostationary transfer orbit, where most communications satellites are dropped off in orbit. [Chinese] officials point out that SpaceX has yet to prove its ability to maintain its prices – between $58 million and around $65 million for commercial customers – as it inaugurates its new Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket and ramps production to meet the company’s large commercial backlog.
China is gambling that its proven track record will entice customers to pay them the extra money over SpaceX’s unproven Falcon 9.
Wind tunnel tests of Dream Chaser’s thermal protection system were recently completed at the Langley Research Center in Virginia.
Because of the scheduled arrival of a Soyuz manned capsule to ISS on Wednesday, NASA and Orbital Sciences have decided to delay Cygnus’s rendezvous and berthing until Saturday.
As far as I can tell, the software glitch and the delay are relatively minor issues, being handled with due care and caution, and will not prevent the eventual docking. More important, they are not serious enough to require any major design changes to Cygnus, which means the freighter will be able to begin operational flights soon after this demo flight is completed.
A software conflict today forced Orbital Sciences to delay the rendezvous of Cygnus with ISS to Tuesday.
SpaceX will delay its planned December launch of Dragon to ISS in order to complete upgrades to the capsule.
It was already expected that this December launch would be delayed anyway because NASA wants SpaceX to complete two launches of the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket before using it to launch Dragon to ISS.
The competition heats up: The Russians have now rescheduled for September 30 the next Proton rocket launch.
The Russian Proton rocket’s return to flight following its spectacular July 2 failure has been rescheduled for Sept. 30 following a review of a first-stage valve issue and discussions between the Russian and Kazakh governments over launch safety issues.
They claim the main reason for the delay was the issues of clean-up following the July 2 launch crash, but that “first-stage valve issue” intrigues me. They have been very closed-mouth about it, yet it very clearly existed.
A lot of famous people have bought tickets to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo but not William Shatner: He’s apparently afraid of flying!
That’s according to Richard Branson. Shatner says instead that it’s the price of the ticket. “He wanted me to go up and pay for it and I said, ‘Hey, you pay me and I’ll go. I’ll risk my life for a large sum of money’. But he didn’t pick me up on my offer.”
Flying in formation: Engineers have pushed the four orbiting Cluster satellites into their closest configuration yet.
In an orbital reconfiguration that will help to maintain the mission’s life span, two of the four satellites achieved their closest-ever separation on 19 September, closing to within just 4 km of each other as they orbited at up to 23 000 km/h high above Earth. “We’re optimising the Cluster formation so that the separation between Cluster 1 and the duo of Cluster 3 and 4 – which are on almost identical orbits – is kept below 100 km when the formation crosses Earth’s magnetic equator,” says Detlef Sieg, working on Cluster flight dynamics at ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
This close formation will provide scientists better data, as they are finding that the Earth’s magnetosphere is far more complex than expected.
The competition heats up: Boeing has successfully completed a series of thruster tests for its CST-100 manned capsule.
Check out this detailed overview of the upcoming launch of SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9, including yesterday’s static fire test.
Orbital Sciences has now posted a detailed outline of Cygnus’s flight schedule for the next few days.
It appears the spacecraft continues to do well as it continues its tests prior to approaching ISS.
NASA has officially ended the Deep Impact mission.
The competition heats up: After several tries, SpaceX finally completed the static fire test of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket today.
It appears it was a success, and that all systems are go for launch when the range becomes available in about 10 days.
An Australia test flight of a scramjet engine ended in failure today when the rocket carrying the engine failed to reach the require elevation for the test to begin.
The impending end of China’s first space station.
The competition heats up: Arianespace has signed a contract to build 18 more Ariane 5 rockets.
This order takes the number of Ariane 5 launchers in production for Arianespace to 38, and guarantees the continued provision of launch services for the European operator’s customers at the Guiana Space Centre through to the end of the decade.
Without doubt Arianespace is now in a solid position through the end of the decade. What will happen to them, however, when Falcon 9 and other cheaper rockets begin to fly regularly will be the real story. They have not yet found a way to cut their costs.
Voyager 1 has enough nuclear fuel to keep doing science through to 2025, and then it will be dead, adrift. On its current trajectory, the probe should eventually end up within 1.5 light years of a star in Camelopardalis, a northern constellation that looks like a cross between a giraffe and a camel. No one knows if there are any planets around that star, nor if aliens will be in residence by the time the probe arrives. “But if they are there, maybe they will capture Voyager 1,” says mission scientist Tom Krimigis of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
In addition to the above silliness, the article gives a good summary of the real data that Voyager 1 is sending back about interstellar space.
Cygnus is operating well in orbit, with berthing to ISS scheduled for September 22.
More information here, including details about Orbital Sciences’ effort to replace the refurbished Soviet-era engines it uses on Antares in order for the rocket to have a long term viability.
The competition heats up: Antares has successfully put Cygnus into orbit.
The next test is getting Cygnus berthed at ISS.
For those on the East Coast, a viewing guide for tomorrow’s launch of Antares/Cygnus from Wallops Island.
The competition heats up: An unmanned spacecraft designed to get rid of space junk is set to launch in 2018, and use a new European built reusable launch system.
Both components of this story are significant. First, a company has gotten the necessary financing to build the spacecraft, proving that there is profit to be made in the removal of space junk. Second, the launch system is simple and reusable, and will lower the cost of getting small payloads into orbit significantly. And it appears it is being built.
The second static fire test of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, planned for yesterday, has been rescheduled for Wednesday.
A delay until the end of September for the actually launch is now certain, since the launch facility and range will be tied up in the interim with other activities.
Orbital Sciences has decided to delay the first launch its Cygnus capsule to ISS by one day.
They found a bad cable and are replacing it.
The first launch of SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 rocket has probably been delayed by at least a week.
No new launch date has been set, but the article suggests that a September 30 date is being considered. Meanwhile, the company will perform another static engine test today.
