MORE LEAK CHECKS AS CREW SPENDS WEEKEND IN RUSSIAN SEGMENT - As part of ongoing work to isolate the source of a slight increase above the standard cabin air leak rate, the Expedition 63 crew will once again spend the weekend inside the station’s Russian segment. All the space station hatches will be closed this weekend so mission controllers can again monitor the air pressure in each module with the goal of localizing the source of the increased rate. The test presents no safety concern for the crew. Commander Chris Cassidy and his crewmates Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin will stay in the Zvezda service module from Friday night into Monday morning.   More
(Source: NASA - Sep 26)

ASTRONAUTS TAKE SHELTER AS SPACE STATION DODGES ORBITAL JUNK - The International Space Station just dodged a fast-moving hunk of orbiting junk. Controllers maneuvered the station away from a potential collision with a piece of debris today (Sept. 22) at 5:19 p.m. EDT (2119 GMT). They did so by firing the thrusters on a Russian Progress cargo spacecraft that's docked to the orbiting lab's Zvezda service module, NASA officials said in an update today.   More
(Source: Space.com - Sep 25)

AIR FORCE TO LAUNCH NEW 'HARDENED' WAR SATELLITE BY 2022 - What if Air Force fighters and bombers were successfully attacking an enemy with absolute precision and exact targeting data when all of a sudden their GPS signals disappeared or got hacked? What if that threw off the guided missiles and ground-coordinates being assembled on the ground by friendly Joint Tactical Air Controllers? In a matter of minutes, attacks could be sent off-target, interrupted or simply made no longer accurate. Army-Air Force multi-domain collaboration might collapse.    More
(Source: Fox News - Sep 25)

DELTA 4-HEAVY CLEARED FOR LIFTOFF AFTER LAUNCH READINESS REVIEW - United Launch Alliance gave the go-ahead Thursday to continue preparations for a third try to send aloft a Delta 4-Heavy rocket and a top secret U.S. government spy satellite from Cape Canaveral early Saturday, the first of two missions poised for liftoff from Florida’s Space Coast this weekend. ULA convened a Launch Readiness Review on Thursday morning to assess the status of launch preparations, the Delta 4-Heavy rocket, the rocket’s clandestine payload, and ground systems.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 25)

VENERABLE AO-7 SATELLITE APPROACHING A RETURN TO FULL SOLAR ILLUMINATION - AMSAT-OSCAR 7 (AO-7), the oldest amateur radio satellite still in operation, is nearing a return to full illumination by the sun, which should take place around September 25 and continue until around December 26. AMSAT’s vice president of operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, says that during this period, AO-7 likely will switch between modes A (2 meters up/10 meters down) and B (70 centimeters up/2 meters down) every 24 hours.   More
(Source: ARRL - Sep 24)

TRACKING DESERT LOCUSTS WITH SATELLITE SERVICES - This year brought a locust crisis to Eastern Africa, threatening food supplies in an already troubled time. In this article, EUMETSAT catches up with the activities of the IGAD Climate Prediction & Applications Centre (ICPAC), a climate centre tracking the locusts in East Africa, and see how EUMETSAT’s satellites and data helped mitigate this crisis. Desert locust swarms are a pestilence of biblical proportion. Coming in waves ever since ancient times, they ravage crops that supply food to communities and livestock – in only one day, a small swarm can consume the food of 35,000 people.   More
(Source: Space in Africa - Sep 23)

LONG MARCH 4B LAUNCHES NEW OCEAN OBSERVATION SATELLITE - China launched a new ocean observation satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Monday. Launch of the Haiyang-2C took place at 05:40 UTC under the power of a Long March-4B (Chang Zheng-4B) rocket. The Haiyang-2 program represents the second generation of ocean observation and monitorization satellites, with the program being approved by the China National Space Administration in February 2007, for measurement of ocean dynamic and environmental parameters in the microwave region (permitting all-weather observations).   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Sep 22)

SATELLITE ACHIEVES SHARP-EYED VIEW OF METHANE - There is a powerful new satellite in the sky to monitor emissions of methane (CH4), one of the key gases driving human-induced climate change. Known as Iris, the spacecraft can map plumes of CH4 in the atmosphere down to a resolution of just 25m. This makes it possible to identify individual sources, such as specific oil and gas facilities. Iris was launched by the Montreal, Canada-based GHGSat company on 2 September.   More
(Source: BBC News - Sep 22)

ELON MUSK’S SPACEX SATELLITES CLUTTER THE SKIES, FRUSTRATING ASTRONOMERS - Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s hundreds of satellites cluttering up the galaxy. A plethora of massive internet satellites launched by eco-friendly billionaire Elon Musk are swirling overhead — and astronomers are trying mightily to figure out how to deal with the sun’s glaring reflection off those man-made orbiters. “There’s almost no place in the sky that you won’t see a satellite going by,” the American Astronomical Society’s Rick Feinberg told The Post.   More
(Source: New York Post - Sep 20)

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