NASA TO PROVIDE LIVE COVERAGE OF SPACE STATION CARGO LAUNCH, DOCKING - NASA will provide live launch and docking coverage of the Roscosmos Progress 85 cargo spacecraft carrying about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 69 crew aboard the International Space Station. The unpiloted spacecraft is scheduled to launch at 9:08 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 22 (6:08 a.m. Baikonur time Wednesday, Aug. 23), on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA coverage will begin at 8:45 p.m. on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. More (Source: NASA - Aug 19)
STARLINK SATELLITES SOAR FROM FLORIDA, WEST COAST LAUNCH SLIPS TO MONDAY DUE TO HURRICANE - A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral late Wednesday carrying 22 Starlink satellites but a launch from California scheduled for just hours later was delayed, dashing SpaceX’s plans for back-to-back launches for its broadband internet service. The Starlink 6-10 mission lit up the Florida night sky with a thunderous liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:36 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Aug. 16 (0336 UTC on the 17th). It had originally been scheduled to fly three hours earlier but slipped to the fourth of five available launch opportunities. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Aug 19)
WATCH SPACEX LAUNCH 21 STARLINK SATELLITES EARLY TUESDAY - SpaceX plans to launch 21 of its Starlink satellites to orbit early Tuesday (Aug. 22), and you can watch the action live. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday at 2:04 a.m. EDT (0604 GMT; 11:04 p.m. local California time on Aug. 21). Watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company. Coverage is expected to begin five minutes before launch. More (Source: Space.com - Aug 18)
SPACEX'S CREW-7 MISSION WILL LAUNCH INTERNATIONAL CREW TO ISS NEXT WEEK - A multinational crew of astronauts is ready for their journey to space. Four astronauts from four countries will fly on SpaceX Dragon capsule to the International Space Station for a six-month mission. They will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on SpaceX's Crew-7 flight no earlier than Aug. 25, and you can watch the whole thing live here at Space.com, via NASA Television. "It's one of the things I think we're most proud of, is what we represent by being an all-international group," NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, who will become the second Iranian-American astronaut to reach space, told reporters during a livestreamed press conference on July 25. More (Source: Yahoo News - Aug 18)
NASA WORKING TO GET PRIVATE SPACE STATIONS UP AND RUNNING BEFORE ISS RETIRES IN 2030 - With the International Space Station (ISS) scheduled to retire in 2030, NASA is placing a huge emphasis on a seamless shift to future private space stations in low-Earth orbit. Many details of that transition are still being worked out, agency officials say. "The reason this is so important is because we do believe that the impact of a gap will be disruptive," said ISS director, Robyn Gatens, during a panel discussion at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference earlier this month. More (Source: Space.com - Aug 18)
US SPACE FORCE CREATES 1ST UNIT DEDICATED TO TARGETING ADVERSARY SATELLITES - The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations' satellites and the ground stations that support them. The 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It'll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in "target engagement," which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the ground stations that support them and transmissions sent between the two. More (Source: Space.com - Aug 17)
SKYWATCH TO OFFER INTEGRATED RADAR-OPTICAL SATELLITE IMAGERY - SkyWatch, a satellite data distributor based in Ontario, Canada, announced a new imagery product that combines radar and optical images. SkyWatch operates a platform called EarthCache that gives its customers access to commercial satellite data. The company said there is now a growing demand for integrated images that combine visually appealing pictures from optical satellites with data from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites that can see at night and through clouds. More (Source: SpaceNews - Aug 17)
BUSY CREW ASSISTS EACH OTHER FOR SPACE SCIENCE AND LAB UPKEEP - The seven-member Expedition 69 crew conducted a wide variety of experimental work on Tuesday including more life science and physics research and installing new science hardware. The maintenance duties aboard the International Space Station included lab stowage work and orbital plumbing tasks. The station astronauts split their day assisting each other on a host of space research and lab upkeep on Tuesday. NASA Flight Engineer Woody Hoburg began his day swapping samples inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox for a space manufacturing study with help from UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi. More (Source: NASA - Aug 17)
U.S. DEACTIVATES GSSAP SURVEILLANCE SATELLITE, TWO NEW ONES IN THE WORKS - A geosynchronous surveillance satellite operated by the U.S. Space Force reached the end of its lifespan and was recently taken out of service. The satellite was part of the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program known as GSSAP. The Space Systems Command confirmed that GSSAP Space Vehicle 2, in orbit since 2014, has been deactivated. “GSSAP 2 has run through the passivation and end of life checklist. It is now in a graveyard orbit,” Lt. Col. Greg Fertig, deputy program manager at the Space Systems Command’s GSSAP Program Office, said Aug. 14 in a statement to SpaceNews. More (Source: SpaceNews - Aug 16)
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