BOEING CREW CAPSULE SET FOR LAUNCH TUESDAY ON TEST FLIGHT TO SPACE STATION - An Atlas 5 rocket was hauled back to its seaside firing stand Monday for launch Tuesday on a flight to boost Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule into orbit for a second unpiloted test to prove the commercial ferry ship is ready to carry astronauts. The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 is scheduled for blast off from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:20 p.m.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Aug 3)

SSTV TRANSMISSIONS SCHEDULED FROM ISS - Friday and Saturday, August 6 – 7, Russian cosmonauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) will transmit slow-scan television (SSTV) images from the station on 145.800 MHz FM. They will use SSTV mode PD-120. The transmissions are part of the Moscow Aviation Institute SSTV experiment (MAI-75) and will be sent via RS0ISS, the ham station in the Russian Zvezda (Service) module using a Kenwood TM-D710 transceiver.   More
(Source: ARRL - Aug 2)

AST SPACEMOBILE TO LAUNCH DEMO SATELLITE WITH SPACEX - AST SpaceMobile, the company building the first space-based cellular broadband network accessible directly by standard mobile phones, has signed an agreement with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. for the launch of its next prototype spacecraft, BlueWalker 3. BlueWalker 3 is expected to launch aboard a SpaceX mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in March 2022.   More
(Source: SatelliteProME.com - Aug 2)

CHINA LAUNCHES TIANHUI I-04 SATELLITE(1/4) - A Long March-2D rocket carrying the Tianhui I-04 satellite blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, July 29, 2021. China successfully launched the Tianhui I-04 satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at noon on Thursday. The satellite was launched by a Long March-2D rocket at 12:01 p.m. (Beijing Time), and then successfully entered the planned orbit.   More
(Source: - Aug 1)

WHO'S GOING TO FIX THE SPACE JUNK PROBLEM? - There are over 20,000 known and tracked pieces of space debris orbiting Earth, each one traveling at about 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h). They pose a risk to future space missions, and nobody is bothering to clean it up. Why? Because it's too hard. In the early 1960s, the U.S. military wanted to devise a new way of communicating with its forces around the globe. If an enemy severed undersea cables, they could only rely on bouncing radio signals off of the ionosphere, which was an unreliable method.   More
(Source: Space.com - Aug 1)

ARIANE 5 ROCKET LAUNCHES TWO GEOSTATIONARY COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES - A European Ariane 5 rocket launched from French Guiana Friday, succeeding on its first flight in nearly a year to deploy a pair of geostationary communications satellites for commercial operators in Brazil and France. The launch was a key test of the Ariane 5 rocket ahead of a flight later this year to send the James Webb Space Telescope toward its observation post nearly a million miles from Earth. The European Space Agency is providing the launch for JWST, a joint program between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency with a cost of more than $10 billion.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jul 31)

HIGH DRAMA AS RUSSIAN LAB MODULE TILTS SPACE STATION WITH ERRANT THRUSTER FIRINGS - A heavyweight Russian laboratory module that experienced a variety of problems after launch last week docked at the International Space Station Thursday, but in a moment of unexpected drama, inadvertent thruster firings briefly knocked the sprawling complex out of its normal orientation. Space station program manager Joel Montalbano said the station was maintaining its orientation, or “attitude,” using massive NASA-supplied gyroscopes when the thruster firings suddenly began at 12:34 p.m. EDT, about three hours after the 44,000-pound Nauka multi-purpose laboratory glided in for docking.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jul 30)

CHINA LAUNCHES CLASSIFIED SATELLITES, TESTS LANDING NOSE CONE WITH PARACHUTE - China sent three Yaogan 30 series satellites into orbit and used the launch to test controlling the rocket's falling nose cone with a parachute. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 8:11 p.m. EDT July 18 (0019 GMT on July 19, or 8:19 a.m. local time), sending the 10th and final trio of Yaogan-30 satellites into orbit at an altitude of 370 miles (600 kilometers).    More
(Source: Space.com - Jul 29)

ROCKET LAB RETURNS TO SERVICE WITH “FLAWLESS” LAUNCH FOR U.S. MILITARY - Resuming launches after a mission failure two months ago, Rocket Lab successfully placed a small U.S. military research and development satellite into orbit Thursday following a fiery liftoff from New Zealand on a flight that was originally supposed to launch from the company’s new pad in Virginia. The 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket ignited its nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines and climbed away from Launch Complex 1 on the North Island of New Zealand at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Thursday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jul 29)

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