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.
India’s space agency has decided to completely replace the second stage of the GSLV rocket that leaked during the rocket’s scrubbed launch last month.
“Although the exact reasons for the leakage in the second stage of the engine, which prevented the launch on August 19, are being probed by the team headed by K Narayanan, it has been decided that a new liquid second stage (GS-2) will be assembled to replace the leaked stage,” said the official. He added that the process of assembling has begun, and that besides the GS-2, all the four liquid strap-on stages are being replaced with new ones.
That leak must have been quite significant for them to make this decision.
Another Russian space glitch: The astronauts who returned to Earth from ISS on September 10 were flying blind.
The altitude sensors apparently failed soon after undocking. Since the Soyuz craft is not piloted but returns to Earth automatically, this failure was not crucial. That it happened, however, sends another worrisome signal about declining Russian quality control standards. If this system failed, why couldn’t another more crucial one fail as well?
Orbital Sciences has rolled Antares/Cygnus to the launchpad. With pictures.
Take a look. You will notice how simple this operation is, and how little infrastructure is involved, compared to the set up NASA has used for the shuttle and intends to use for SLS.
When will SpaceX launch the upgraded Falcon 9? We have competing news stories:
This is very puzzling. That the Canadian release was sent out today suggests that they have information we don’t have about the static fire test and thus knew they could announce the launch date. That Musk is more circumspect however suggests that the information the Canadians have is not correct.
Update: Stephen Clark at Spaceflight Now has more information. It appears the launch will not happen on Sunday, as SpaceX plans a second launchpad static test tomorrow to iron out the unexplained “anomalies” in yesterday’s static test.
Two Earth-based radio telescopes have detected the radio glow of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, now in interstellar space.
After a journey of 10 years, astronomers are accelerating preparations for the arrival of Europe’s Rosetta space probe at Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko.
The spacecraft will be awakened in January 2014, with rendezvous later that year.
SpaceX successfully completed a static test of the 9 first stage engines of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket today.
SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 rocket briefly fired nine Merlin 1D engines on the launch pad Thursday, but engineers will review data from the prelaunch static fire test before confirming the mission’s targeted Sunday launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, sources familiar with SpaceX’s launch preparations said.
