SOYUZ FAILURE PROBE NARROWS FOCUS ON COLLISION AT BOOSTER SEPARATION - Russian investigators believe a malfunction during separation of the Soyuz rocket’s four liquid-fueled first stage boosters two minutes after liftoff from Kazakhstan led to an emergency landing of a two-man crew heading for the International Space Station, officials said Friday. Speaking to reporters Friday in Moscow, veteran cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, head of the Russian space agency’s human spaceflight program, said the investigation into Thursday’s launch failure has narrowed on a collision between part of the Soyuz rocket’s first stage and the launcher’s second stage.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 15)

RUSSIA PUTS OFF MILITARY SATELLITE LAUNCH OVER SOYUZ BOOSTER INCIDENT - The next launch of a Lotos-S radar reconnaissance satellite aboard a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket from the Plesetsk spaceport in north Russia has been postponed over the incident with the Soyuz booster at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on October 11, a source in the space industry told TASS on Saturday. "Due to the incident at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the nearest launch of the Soyuz-2.1b rocket with the military satellite from the Plesetsk spaceport scheduled for October 19 has been put off indefinitely," the source said.    More
(Source: TASS - Oct 14)

SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW HOMES, FORESTS, AND A MILITARY BASE DESTROYED BY HURRICANE MICHAEL - Hurricane Michael — the fourth Category 4 storm to pummel the United States in 14 months — snapped pine trees like toothpicks, washed neighborhoods into the sea, and shredded the hangars of an Air Force base. Before the storm's 155 mph winds struck the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10, storm scientists predicted Michael would be an extremely intense storm, in large part because it passed through ocean waters that were 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit above normal — and hurricanes thrive on warm water. The devastation, seen by satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above, is ghastly.    More
(Source: Mashable - Oct 14)

EMPTY SPACE STATION? NASA PREPARES FOR THE WORST (BUT HOPES FOR THE BEST) AFTER SOYUZ ABORT - A few months from now, the International Space Station (ISS) could be unoccupied for the first time in nearly two decades. Russia's workhorse Soyuz rocket suffered a serious anomaly just minutes after launching two astronauts toward the ISS today (Oct. 11), forcing the spaceflyers' crew craft to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan. Those two explorers — NASA's Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin — made it through the bumpy touchdown just fine and are in good condition, NASA officials said. But the Soyuz will be grounded while Russian investigators try to figure out exactly what happened today, and how to prevent it from occurring again.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 14)

TWO SATELLITES WITH SECRETIVE MISSIONS LAUNCHED BY CHINA - Two Chinese Yaogan military reconnaissance satellites launched this week, riding a Long March 2C booster into orbit on a mission that inaugurated the use of a new restartable upper stage to increase the rocket’s carrying capacity. The two Yaogan 32 satellites, designated Yaogan 32-01 and 32-02, lifted off from the Jiuquan space center in remote northwestern China at 0243 GMT Tuesday (10:43 p.m. EDT Monday), according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. The launch occurred at 10:43 a.m. Beijing time Tuesday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 13)

HERE'S WHAT TODAY'S SOYUZ LAUNCH FAILURE MEANS FOR SPACE STATION ASTRONAUTS - The three astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station were supposed to welcome two new roommates today, but an anomaly a few minutes after launch sent those crewmembers speeding back to Earth in an emergency landing. Both crewmembers (NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovichin) are safe, but the launch failure means that much more than just today's space station schedule will need to be reshuffled. NASA, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and the International Space Station control team still have a whole lot of decisions to make about what to do next — not to mention an investigation to conduct into what went wrong.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 12)

NASA’S TERRA SATELLITE CELEBRATES 100,000 ORBITS - More than 400 miles above Earth, a satellite the size of a school bus is earning its frequent flyer miles. On Oct. 6, NASA’s Terra completed 100,000 orbits around Earth. Terra joins a handful of satellites to mark this orbital milestone, including the International Space Station, Earth’s Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), Landsat 5 and Landsat 7. Terra, which launched Dec. 18, 1999, is projected to continue operation into the 2020s.   More
(Source: ECNmag.com - Oct 12)

ASTRONAUTS ESCAPE MALFUNCTIONING SOYUZ ROCKET - A US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut were forced to make an emergency landing after their Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned en route to the International Space Station (ISS). Shortly after taking off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin reported a problem with the rocket's booster. The men were forced into a "ballistic descent", with their capsule landing a few hundred miles north of Baikonur. They have been picked up by rescuers.   More
(Source: BBC News - Oct 11)

HURRICANE MICHAEL LOOMS OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO IN NASA VIDEO - Hurricane Michael is growing stronger, expected to make landfall on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. And there's no better view than from the quiet safety of space. While the storm loomed over the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, cameras aboard the International Space Station captured views of Hurricane Michael at 12:13pm and 12:50pm ET. A short new video from the space station shows a swirling Michael moving northwest at 12 miles an hour.    More
(Source: Mashable - Oct 11)

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