LONG MARCH 3C LAUNCHES FOURTH TIANLIAN-1 COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE - China has successfully launched on Tuesday, Nov. 22, a Long March 3C rocket carrying the country’s fourth Tianlian-1 data tracking and relay communications satellite. Liftoff took place at 11:24 p.m. Beijing time (15:24 GMT / 10:24 a.m. EST) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Launch of the mission was originally targeted for Nov. 20 but was postponed two days. However, the cause of this delay has not been revealed by the officials. More (Source: SpaceFlight Insider - Nov 24)
TINY 'BLACK MAGIC' SATELLITE PACKS ORIGAMI-LIKE RADAR DISH - NASA challenged engineers to pack an entire satellite dish into a cereal box with Radar in a CubeSat (RainCube), a technology-demonstration mission scheduled for launch in 2017 that will measure rain and snowfall on Earth from space. Until now, most satellite dishes have been parabolic, which means that bigger dishes led to better radio transmissions. But radio-frequency engineers have been known to call the forces guiding communications over the air "black magic" because of their complicated physics, NASA said in a statement — and new CubeSat technology must fit that magic into a new, tiny package. More (Source: Space.com - Nov 24)
THANKSGIVING IN SPACE: SPACE STATION COMMANDER SHANE KIMBROUGH PLANS FEAST - After a normal workday in orbit Thursday, International Space Station commander Shane Kimbrough plans to host an American Thanksgiving Day dinner of turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings with his U.S., French and Russian colleagues. “Of course Thanksgiving, in my world, is not complete without some football,” Kimbrough said in a video update from orbit Monday. “So we’re going to have mission control send up some live football games for us to watch to complete the experience of Thanksgiving. More (Source: CBS News - Nov 24)
BLOW IT UP: INFLATABLE SPACE STATION HABITAT SHOWS PROMISE IN EARLY TESTS - An inflatable space habitat that could save weight and volume on future missions is showing how well it can do its job. The verdict: So far, it works, and that gives the habitat a better chance of being part of future space efforts. Called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, the habitat is an inflatable spheroid made of fabric that starts off folded into a shape like a flattish cone with the top cut off. It was originally launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 8. More (Source: Space.com - Nov 23)
U.S. WEATHER SATELLITE'S LAUNCH PROMISES 'QUANTUM LEAP' IN FORECASTS - A U.S. weather satellite that will "revolutionize" forecasting blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Saturday, promising to deliver continuous high-definition views of hurricanes and other storms over the Western Hemisphere. A detailed stream of images provided by the satellite is expected to sharpen weather forecasts, provide more advanced warning of floods and better tracking of wildfires, plumes and volcanic ash clouds. Carried atop an Atlas 5 rocket, the GOES-R satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:42 p.m. EST. More (Source: Reuters - Nov 22)
ASTRONAUTS RELEASE CYGNUS SPACE FREIGHTER FROM STATION - Expedition 50 robotic arm operators Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) commanded the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to release the Cygnus spacecraft at 8:22 a.m. EST while the space station was flying 251 miles over the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of Colombia. Earlier, ground controllers detached Cygnus from the station and maneuvered it into place for its departure. Once Cygnus is a safe distance away from the station, ground controllers at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio and at Orbital ATK in Dulles, Virginia, will activate the Saffire-II experiment. Cygnus also will release four LEMUR CubeSats from an external deployer on Friday, Nov. 25, sending them to join a remote sensing satellite constellation that provides global ship tracking and weather monitoring. More (Source: NASA - Nov 22)
'FIRE IN SPACE' EXPERIMENT KICKS OFF ABOARD US CARGO SHIP - How does fire act in space? Researchers will soon find out by trying to ignite nine different materials aboard an unmanned spaceship on its way to a fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, NASA said Monday. The fire experiment is the second of its kind aboard a Cygnus cargo ship operated by the US company Orbital ATK. The first experiment took place in June. The controlled blazes will take place aboard a vessel that left the International Space Station, packed with 1.5 tons of garbage, at 8:22 am (1322 GMT) on Monday. More (Source: Phys.org - Nov 22)
US, RUSSIAN AND FRENCH CREW ARRIVES AT SPACE STATION FOR 6-MONTH STAY - The International Space Station (ISS) received three new crewmembers today (Nov. 19), with the arrival of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos, astronaut Peggy Whitson of NASA and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency (ESA) arrived at the space station at 4:58 p.m. EST (2158 GMT), docking their Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft to the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module. The hatches linking the Soyuz and the ISS are scheduled to open at about 7:35 p.m. EST today (0035 GMT Sunday); you can watch that event live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, with coverage starting at 6:45 p.m. EST (2345 GMT). More (Source: Space.com - Nov 20)
ATLAS 5 LAUNCHES THE MOST ADVANCED U.S. WEATHER SATELLITE IN HISTORY - Revolutionizing the way American meteorologists see the weather, likened to the advancement from black and white television to modern high definition TV, a new observatory was successfully launched Saturday by an Atlas 5 rocket to serve as the linchpin to forecasting what tomorrow will bring. The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket with the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R, or GOES-R, roared away from Cape Canaveral at 6:42 p.m. EST (2342 GMT). The launch was delayed an hour while engineers verified a potential concern with a component on another rocket was no threat to the Atlas, then worked an undisclosed problem with the Eastern Range. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 20)
THE MORNING DOWNLOAD: SILICON VALLEY SATELLITES MAY BRING INTERNET FOR ALL - Good morning. Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has filed a proposal with the Federal Communications Commission to launch, eventually, 4,000 satellites to provide internet access for the world. An initial launch of 800 satellites would cover the United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as The Guardian reports. Mr. Musk has been talking about his plans for a satellite network for a few years, saying that he wants to proceed gradually so as not to overextend himself, his company or the technology. Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google also have satellite ambitions, working together and separately. Google has chipped in $1 billion to help Mr. Musk. Facebook’s first satellite was destroyed in September, when a SpaceX rocket preparing to bring it to space exploded. More (Source: Wall Street Journal - Nov 19)
MILESTONE-SETTING 100TH EELV ROCKET MOVES TO LAUNCH PAD FOR LIFTOFF SATURDAY - The 100th rocket in America’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, the current fleet of boosters used by the nation to get its critical assets into space, was rolled to the pad this morning for a vital mission on Saturday. The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will lift the GOES-R geostationary weather observatory into orbit for NASA and NOAA, departing Saturday during a one-hour window that opens at 5:42 p.m. EST (2242 GMT). At 10:56 a.m. EST (1556 GMT) today, the 197-foot-tall launcher was wheeled from its assembly building to the Complex 41 pad at Cape Canaveral aboard a mobile platform to begin final pre-flight preparations. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 19)
TWO CHINESE ASTRONAUTS BACK ON EARTH - Two Chinese astronauts closed out a month in space Friday with a parachute-assisted landing in northern China’s remote Inner Mongolia territory, a day after the crew departed the Tiangong 2 space lab to begin the trip home. The two-man team finished their experiments this week, a slate of tests and investigations aimed at a range of scientific and engineering disciplines, and cleaned up the Tiangong 2 module before closing hatches leading to their Shenzhou 11 space capsule, the ship they flew into space Oct. 16 atop a Long March 2F rocket. Shenzhou 11 detached from the Tiangong 2 space lab at 0441 GMT Thursday (11:41 p.m. EST Wednesday), then headed for landing in Inner Mongolia’s Siziwang Banner region. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 18)
EUROPE LAUNCHES GALILEO SATELLITE QUARTET - Europe has extended its satellite-navigation system by putting another four spacecraft in orbit. They went up on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, leaving the ground at 10:06 (13:06 GMT). It is the first time Europe's premier launch vehicle has been used to loft Galileo satellites. Normally, they go up on a Russian Soyuz, two at a time. Mission success was declared once the quartet had been safely ejected from Ariane's upper-stage. Controllers immediately made contact with the satellites and confirmed their solar panels were deployed and generating power. The flight brings Galileo's in-orbit constellation to 18 spacecraft. More (Source: BBC News - Nov 18)
SATELLITE SET FOR LAUNCH WILL REVOLUTIONIZE U.S. WEATHER FORECASTING - Over a two-year period through 2013, a Harris Corp. facility in Melbourne became one of Brevard County’s biggest power consumers. In a lab there, engineers plugged in several hundred racks holding more than 2,000 computer servers to test equipment essential to the success of a satellite mission launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:42 p.m. ET Saturday. The satellite called GOES-R is expected to revolutionize the nation’s weather forecasting capabilities, dramatically improving the quality and speed of images taken from more than 22,000 miles above the planet. More (Source: USA Today - Nov 18)
LIFTOFF! TRULY INTERNATIONAL CREW LAUNCHES TO SPACE STATION - A trio of space travelers from the U.S., Russia and France launched into space Thursday (Nov.17), to kick off a six-month mission to the International Space Station. The three-person Expedition 50/51 crew includes Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Oleg Novitskiy, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and the European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet, who will become the first French astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station. Tightly packed in a Soyuz MS-03 space capsule atop a Soyuz FG rocket, the team lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT). About 9 minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz capsule arrived in low-Earth orbit. More (Source: Space.com - Nov 18)
SPACEX JUST ASKED PERMISSION TO LAUNCH 4,425 SATELLITES — MORE THAN CURRENTLY ORBIT EARTH - SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by the Mars-hungry tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, just made a big move to enshroud the planet in high-speed internet coverage. On November 15, the company filed a lengthy application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 4,425 satellites. (We first heard about the filing through the r/SpaceX community on Reddit.) That is a hell of a lot of satellites. More (Source: Business Insider - Nov 17)
NASA, RUSSIA SET FLIGHTS FOR TRIMMED-DOWN SPACE STATION CREW - With Thursday's (Nov. 17) launch of three new crewmembers, the International Space Station (ISS) will be returned to full staffing — but not for long. Beginning with the next Soyuz launch, in March 2017, Russia is cutting one cosmonaut post from the station crew and doesn't plan to restore the job until a new module is launched, in 2018. Cosmonauts typically comprise half the station's six-member crew, but "right now, we don't need it," Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who now oversees human spaceflight for the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said in an interview at the International Astronautical Congress, which was held in late September in Guadalajara, Mexico. More (Source: Space.com - Nov 17)
SPACE JOURNAL: CHINESE ASTRONAUTS ACCEPT 1ST EARTH-SPACE INTERVIEW - Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong are currently on a 33-day space journey and acting as Xinhua special correspondents. On Tuesday, they talked with their copy desk on earth for the first time. Li Keyong (associate director of Xinhua All-Media Service): Hello, mission commander Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong! More (Source: Xinhua - Nov 17)
SOYUZ CREW LAUNCHER ROLLED OUT FOR LIFTOFF FROM KAZAKHSTAN - The Soyuz booster that will send the International Space Station’s next three residents into orbit later this week rolled out of an integration hangar early Monday and rode a railroad car to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket will lift off at 2020 GMT (3:20 p.m. EST) Thursday from Baikonur, heading to orbit on a two-day chase of the space station, setting up for a radar-guided rendezvous and docking Saturday. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 16)
