SPACEX ADDS ANOTHER 60 SATELLITES TO STARLINK NETWORK - SpaceX successfully deployed 60 more Starlink internet satellites in orbit Saturday, continuing a record launch cadence while engineers assess a concern with Falcon 9 rocket engines that has delayed other missions, including the next crew flight to the International Space Station. The 60 Starlink satellites blasted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:31:34 a.m. EDT (1531:34 GMT) Saturday. The mission was delayed from Thursday to allow time for engineers to assess a problem with a camera on the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 25)

US ASTRONAUT VOTES EARLY FROM SPACE STATION - ASA astronaut Kate Rubins shared her voting selfie from orbit after stating before her launch earlier this month that she would cast her ballot from the International Space Station. Since 1997, as a concession to the fact that most NASA astronauts live near the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas has had an extreme absentee ballot procedure in place for anyone who finds themselves off Earth on Election Day.    More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 24)

SPACEX SCRUBS 15TH STARLINK MISSION - Just four days after the previous flight, SpaceX was ready to launch its third batch of Starlink satellites this month into orbit at 12:14 EDT (16:14 UTC) on Thursday, 22 October. However, an issue 13 minutes before liftoff forced a hold and scrub for the day. The v1.0 L14 mission — the 14th launch of operational satellites and 15th Starlink flight overall — will launch from pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.    More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Oct 22)

SOYUZ BRINGS THREE SPACE STATION FLIERS BACK TO EARTH - One week after two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut arrived at the International Space Station, the three crew members they’re replacing strapped into their own Soyuz spacecraft, undocked and returned to Earth Wednesday with a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 196-day mission. Descending under a huge orange-and-white parachute, the Soyuz crew module touched down at 10:54 p.m. EDT (8:54 a.m. Thursday local time), three-and-a-half hours after departing the lab complex.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 22)

SPACEX IS WORKING WITH MICROSOFT TO BUILD A SATELLITE NETWORK THAT CAN DETECT THE LAUNCH OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS - paceX has tapped Azure, a massive cloud-computing service built by Microsoft, to help it develop and operate experimental satellites capable of detecting missile launches all over the world. Microsoft revealed its partnership with SpaceX on Tuesday as part of its larger announcement of new modular datacenters, or shipping-container-like platforms crammed with cloud-computing resources that can be deployed to remote areas of the world.   More
(Source: Business Insider - Oct 22)

COMPANY ADVANCES PLAN FOR PRIVATE CITIZEN FLIGHT TO SPACE STATION - Houston-based Axiom Space is negotiating final details of a contract with NASA to fly a private citizen to the International Space Station in 2021. The company's CEO, Michael Suffredini, said the mission is fully funded, and not by governments. "We're just about done with our contract with NASA, so we expect that to be complete here in the next two to three weeks," Suffredini said last week during an online panel discussion sponsored by International Astronautical Congress.   More
(Source: UPI.com - Oct 21)

SPACE-STATION CREW MEMBERS JUST FOUND AN ELUSIVE AIR LEAK BY WATCHING TEA LEAVES FLOAT IN MICROGRAVITY - The International Space Station has been leaking an unusual amount of air since September 2019. At first, crew members held off on troubleshooting the issue, since the leak wasn't major. But in August, the leak rate increased, prompting astronauts and cosmonauts on board the orbiting laboratory to start trying to locate its source in earnest.   More
(Source: Business Insider - Oct 20)

LEOLABS INDICATES NO COLLISION OF SOVIET SATELLITE AND CHINESE ROCKET STAGE - Most of the aerospace world watched the skies over Antarctica and New Zealand for portions of Thursday night/Friday morning. Earlier this week, LeoLabs Inc, a company that tracks objects in Low Earth Orbit, issued a statement regarding two large objects which posed a “high risk” of collision at 00:56:40 UTC on 16 October 2020 (8:56:40 pm EDT on 15 October). Roughly one hour after the time of possible collision, LeoLabs confirmed “No indication of collision” via a statement on Twitter.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Oct 18)

SPACEX LAUNCHES ANOTHER BATCH OF STARLINK SATELLITES - SpaceX launched 60 more Starlink internet relay platforms into orbit Sunday as the company ramps up network testing in Washington state and touts a streak of nearly 300 satellites launched since June without a spacecraft failure. Nine Merlin 1D engines fired up and powered the Falcon 9 rocket off pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:25:57 a.m. EDT (1225:57 GMT) Sunday, marking the 14th Falcon 9 mission dedicated to deploying satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 18)

Previous Next