NASA ASTRONAUT ANNE MCCLAIN TO DEPART THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION MONDAY AFTER 204-DAY MISSION - NASA astronaut Anne McClain and two crewmates on the International Space Station are scheduled to conclude their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory Monday, June 24. Live coverage of their return will begin at 3:30 p.m. EDT on NASA Television and the agency’s website. McClain, a flight engineer for Expedition 59, expedition and Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, will close the hatch to their Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft Monday afternoon and undock from the station. More (Source: SpaceCoastDaily.com - Jun 24)
TWO COMMERCIAL BROADCAST SATELLITES LAUNCHED ON ARIANE 5 ROCKET - A pair of television broadcast satellites for AT&T and Eutelsat rocketed into orbit Thursday evening, riding a European Ariane 5 launcher into space in a spectacular sunset launch from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern coast South America. After a smooth 11-hour countdown, the Ariane 5’s Vulcain 2 main engine flashed to life at 2143 GMT (5:43 p.m. EDT; 6:43 p.m. French Guiana time) Thursday, followed by ignition of the launcher’s twin solid rocket boosters seven seconds later to force the heavy-lift vehicle into the sky. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 22)
BOEING TO LAUNCH ASTRONAUTS TO THE INT'L SPACE STATION IN NEW CAPSULE - Boeing is expanding its business of travel Opens a New Window. beyond 30,000 feet. In a partnership with NASA, the airline company is working to help the agency get American astronauts destined for the International Space Station safely into the thermosphere with its new CST-100 Starliner - which is a capsule. Launchpad testing is expected to begin by August. More (Source: Fox Business - Jun 22)
CHINA’S MOON, MARS AND SPACE STATION MISSIONS MAY BE FACING DELAYS - China’s major space missions including a lunar sample return, Mars orbiter and rover and a modular space station could be facing delays due to an apparent issue affecting rockets required for launches. The Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket is China’s most powerful launch vehicle and was designed to launch large spacecraft to geosynchronous orbits and planetary bodies. It was being prepared for a third flight in July, Yang Baohua, vice president of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China’s main space contractor and developer of the Long March 5, announced in a Jan. 29 news conference in Beijing. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jun 22)
STATION MISSION PLANNING REVEALS NEW TARGET COMMERCIAL CREW LAUNCH DATES - As part of standard planning among the international partners, NASA has revised its Visiting Vehicle plan for all upcoming and long-range missions to the International Space Station. The update includes new planning dates for the first Commercial Crew launches on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner vehicles, when U.S. crew rotation flights are slated to begin, when Japan’s newest version of the HTV cargo craft will take flight, and when Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser cargo resupply vehicle will make its first trip to the outpost. More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Jun 21)
DISPOSABLE $100 IOT SATELLITES COULD SWARM EARTH'S ORBIT - Tiny cheap satellites, self-organizing and communicating as a group, could shift the internet of things (IoT) to space. The postage-stamp-sized devices, acting as sensors, just like the ones we see in traditional IoT networks could perform tasks such as mapping or studying Earth, say scientists involved in a recent successful launch of the disposable nanosatellites. The test satellites, essentially just sensors, were deployed in a batch in March. They captured data, communicated with one another, and then after a couple of days in orbit, as was planned, burned up as they reentered the atmosphere. More (Source: Network World - Jun 21)
RUSSIA TO LAUNCH SCIENCE MISSION PROBING DARK ENERGY - A Russian-built satellite hosting an array of X-ray telescopes is awaiting launch Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a mission to measure the mass and distance of colossal clusters of galaxies throughout the universe. The X-ray observatory, designated Spektr-RG, is scheduled to blast into space on top of a Russian Proton rocket at 1217:14 GMT (8:17:14 a.m. EDT; 5:17:14 p.m. Baikonur time) Friday to kick off Russia’s most prominent space science mission in seven years. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 21)
THE SATELLITE WITH X-RAY VISION - In the early hours of October 23, 2011, ROSAT was engulfed in the waves of the Indian Ocean. This was the end of a success story that is unparalleled in German space exploration research. The satellite, developed and built by a team led by Joachim Trümper from the Garchingbased Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, not only found more than 150,000 new cosmic X-ray sources, it also revolutionized astronomy. More (Source: Phys.org - Jun 20)
THIS IS WHAT 2 DOZEN SATELLITES LOOK LIKE PACKED FOR LAUNCH ON A SPACEX FALCON HEAVY - SpaceX is gearing up for its busiest Falcon Heavy megarocket launch yet and now, thanks to the U.S. Air Force, we know what the epic rideshare looks like. When the next SpaceX Falcon Heavy launches on Monday (June 24) from NASA's historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the heavy-lift rocket will be carrying 24 different satellites for the Air Force's Space Test Program-2 mission. If you're wondering what two dozen satellites look like inside a Falcon Heavy nose cone, wonder no more. More (Source: Space.com - Jun 20)
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