SPACEX SATELLITE LAUNCH LIGHTS UP NIGHT SKY, SOCIAL MEDIA - When SpaceX launched a rocket carrying an Argentine Earth-observation satellite from California’s Central Coast, both the night sky and social media lit up. People as far away as San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Reno, Nevada, posted photos of the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch and return on Sunday night. It was the first time SpaceX landed a first-stage booster back at its launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles. The Air Force warned residents on the Central Coast that they might see multiple engine burns by the first stage and hear one or more sonic booms as it returned. More (Source: Washington Post - Oct 9)
SPACEX ACES FIRST-EVER ROCKET LANDING IN CALIFORNIA AFTER SPECTACULAR SATELLITE LAUNCH - A Falcon 9 rocket with a pre-flown first stage launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base tonight (Oct. 7) at 10:21 p.m. EDT (7:21 p.m. local time; 0221 GMT on Oct. 8), successfully delivering Argentina's SAOCOM-1A Earth-observation satellite to orbit. And, less than 8 minutes after liftoff, the booster's first stage came back to Earth for a pinpoint touchdown at SpaceX's Vandenberg landing zone, just a quarter-mile (400 meters) from its launch pad. [SpaceX's Epic Fly-Back Reusable Rocket Landings Explained] "This is great news for everyone here at SpaceX," Tom Praderio, a SpaceX firmware engineer, said during live launch commentary tonight. "We're all very excited." More (Source: Space.com - Oct 8)
USED SPACEX ROCKET TO LAUNCH SATELLITE, TRY HISTORIC LANDING TONIGHT: WATCH LIVE - SpaceX will loft an Earth-observation satellite and attempt its first-ever rocket landing on California soil tonight (Oct. 7), and you can watch all the action live. A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped by Argentina's SAOCOM-1A satellite is scheduled to launch from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 10:21 p.m. EDT (7:21 p.m. local California time; 0221 GMT on Oct. 8). If all goes according to plan, less than 9 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's first stage will come back to Earth safely at SpaceX's "Landing Zone 4" facility at Vandenberg. You can watch the launch live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via SpaceX. Coverage will start about 20 minutes before liftoff. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 8)
NO COMMERCIAL CREW TEST FLIGHTS EXPECTED THIS YEAR - NASA has released new target dates for test flights of commercial crew capsules in development by SpaceX and Boeing, with unpiloted demo missions by SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spaceships now scheduled for January and March, followed by crewed orbital missions in mid-2019. The new schedule for the commercial crew test flights was released Thursday by NASA, which promised more timely updates as the Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner near their first space missions. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 7)
SEE A GLORIOUS ORBITAL SUNRISE GLOW FROM THE SPACE STATION - Even though the crew of the International Space Station sees 16 sunrises over the course of a day, it never gets old. European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst captured an outstanding sequence of orbital sunrise photos and posted them to social media on Friday. They show a molten sun emerging from a bright horizon of orange, yellow and blue stripes. More (Source: CNET - Oct 6)
RAYTHEON’S SEEME SATELLITE SUCCESSFULLY DELIVERED TO DARPA - Raytheon delivered the first Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements (SeeMe), satellite to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Assembled on the company’s missile production lines, the new SeeMe satellite aims to provide greater situational awareness to soldiers on the ground. DARPA’s SeeMe program is designed to show that small satellites can be built affordably to give small squads timely tactical imagery directly from a small satellite. A future constellation of small satellites could deliver high-resolution images of precise locations of interest to the soldier’s handheld device. More (Source: Via Satellite - Oct 5)
HUH? CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS RAISE RISK OF SATELLITE COLLISIONS - In February 2009, two space satellites orbiting at speeds of almost 17,000 mph collided at a height of 482 miles over Siberia. One was an operational U.S. communications satellite, Iridium-33. The other was a heavier, obsolete Russian military satellite called Cosmos-2251. For space scientists, the collision was a rude awakening to a worrisome kind of new math. The ultra-high-speed collision turned two space orbiters in a cloud of debris with 2,300 objects. More (Source: Scientific American - Oct 5)
CAPSULE CARRYING 3 SPACE STATION CREW MEMBERS LANDS SAFELY ON EARTH - Russian space capsule with three men onboard has safely landed in a barren steppe in Kazakhstan after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. The Soyuz MS-08 carrying Russia’s Oleg Artemyev and NASA’s Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold touched down at 5.44 p.m. Kazakh time (1144 GMT). More (Source: TIME - Oct 5)
SPACE STATION CREW MEMBERS SET FOR RETURN TO EARTH AFTER LENGTHY MISSION - A cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts finished packing up their Soyuz ferry ship Wednesday and prepared to undock from the International Space Station early Thursday for a fiery descent to touch down on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The trip closes out a 197-day mission that included four spacewalks, a full slate of research and an emergency leak repair. With commander Oleg Artemyev at the controls, flanked on the left by flight engineer Drew Feustel and on the right by Ricky Arnold, the Soyuz MS-08/54S spacecraft was scheduled to detach from the station's space-facing Poisk module at 3:57 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) to kick off a three-hour, 48-minute trip home to Earth. More (Source: CBS News - Oct 5)
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