FCC APPROVES SPACEX’S PLANS TO FLY INTERNET-BEAMING SATELLITES IN A LOWER ORBIT - The Federal Communications Commission has approved SpaceX’s request to fly a large swath of its future internet-beaming satellites at a lower orbit than originally planned. The approval was a major regulatory hurdle the company needed to clear in order to start launching its first operational satellites from Florida next month. In November, SpaceX sent a request to the FCC to partially revise plans for the company’s satellite internet constellation, known as Starlink. Under SpaceX’s original agreement with the commission, the company had permission to launch 4,425 Starlink satellites into orbits that ranged between 1,110 to 1,325 kilometers up.   More
(Source: The Verge - Apr 28)

NASA CARBON OBSERVATORY POISED FOR LAUNCH TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Atmospheric scientists are about to get the most detailed observations yet of the places on Earth that emit or store carbon. If all goes well, NASA will launch its latest carbon-monitoring instrument to the International Space Station (ISS) on 30 April. The US$110-million Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) will be attached to the outside of the station. The probe will monitor areas of the planet that aren’t easily surveyed by carbon-measuring satellites1, collecting high-resolution data from larger regions than its predecessors. Researchers hope that the data from the three-year OCO-3 mission will increase their understanding of Earth’s carbon cycle, hone climate-change predictions and improve carbon dioxide measurements.   More
(Source: Nature - Apr 27)

ATLAS 5 ROCKET, U.S. AIR FORCE SATELLITE ARRIVE AT CAPE CANAVERAL FOR JUNE LAUNCH - Atlas 5 rocket hardware and a U.S. Air Force communications satellite have arrived at Cape Canaveral for United Launch Alliance’s next mission, scheduled for liftoff June 27. The equipment arrived at the Florida spaceport last weekend on separate shipments aboard an Air Force C-5 cargo plane and and ULA’s Mariner transport vessel.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 27)

ALL EYES ON SPACEX FOR UPCOMING SPACE STATION SUPPLY LAUNCH FROM CAPE CANAVERAL - Moving past a recent setback with its astronaut capsule, SpaceX will focus its efforts on launching supplies as soon as Tuesday morning for astronauts living and working on the International Space Station. Falcon 9 will launch the cargo Dragon space capsule from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Liftoff is slated for Tuesday 4:22 a.m. U.S. Air Force weather officials are currently predicting an 80 percent chance of good weather conditions for the pre-daybreak blast off.    More
(Source: WKMG News 6 & ClickOrlando - Apr 27)

SPACE JUNK IS A HUGE PROBLEM—AND IT’S ONLY GETTING BIGGER - Hundreds of thousands of man-made objects are zipping around our planet—from dead satellites to errant nuts and bolts, putting our working satellites at risk. In 2009, nearly 500 miles above Siberia, two satellites collided at some 22,300 mph, bursting into a cloud of thousands of pieces of debris. The culprits of this high-speed accident were the inactive Russian satellite Cosmos 2251 and the active U.S.-based communication satellite Iridium 33. Their catastrophic end was the first known time that two satellites collided in space, and a startling reminder of the growing problem of space junk.   More
(Source: National Geographic - Apr 26)

WATCH A NASA TIME-LAPSE VIDEO OF A SPACE FREIGHTER ATTACHING TO THE ISS - A time-lapse video from the International Space Station's Twitter account on Wednesday shows how a space freighter docked with the ISS last Friday. In the video, we see how the unmanned Northrup Grumman Cygnus freighter is bolted to the ISS's Unity module, which has a port that constantly faces Earth. According to NASA's blog, the Cygnus brought "close to 7,600 pounds of research and supplies to the space station." That includes experiments on the immune system in space, a well as vascular aging.    More
(Source: CNET - Apr 26)

CARBON-MONITORING INSTRUMENT POISED FOR LAUNCH TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - A $110 million NASA science instrument twice targeted for cancellation by the Trump administration is set for launch Tuesday inside the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule for delivery to the International Space Station, where it will spend three years charting changing carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere. Once mounted outside the space station’s Kibo lab module, the instrument package will scan the planet between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude with the sensitivity to measure carbon dioxide levels to a precision better than one part per million, or within about 0.3 to 0.5 percent of the total carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 26)

THE EMERGENCY LAUNCH ABORT SYSTEMS OF SPACEX AND BOEING EXPLAINED - If anything goes wrong when a crew of astronauts launches into space, their spacecraft always has a built-in abort system to help them return to Earth safely. But not all abort systems work the same way. In October of 2018, the Soyuz launch-abort system flawlessly brought two International Space Station-bound crewmembers back to Earth after their rocket malfunctioned. In much the same way, the new commercial crew vehicles built by SpaceX and Boeing are designed to safely separate from their rockets and float back down to Earth in case of an emergency.    More
(Source: Space.com - Apr 25)

AEHF-5 SATELLITE ARRIVES AT CAPE CANAVERAL, PREPARES FOR LAUNCH ATOP AN ATLAS V IN JUNE - The U.S. Air Force’s Advanced Extremely High-Frequency program completed a major program milestone successfully delivering the AEHF-5 satellite to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Prior to transport to CCAFS, AEHF-5 completed testing to include Baseline Integrated Systems Test, Acoustic/Post-Acoustic Deployment tests, Thermal Vacuum, Final Integrated Systems Test, and Factory Confidence Test.   More
(Source: SpaceCoastDaily.com - Apr 24)

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