SPACEX SET TO LAUNCH MYSTERIOUS ZUMA PAYLOAD TOMORROW NIGHT - Tomorrow night, SpaceX will launch perhaps its most secretive payload yet: a classified government satellite built by defense contractor Northrop Grumman. The purpose of the mission, codenamed Zuma, is essentially unknown. It’s unclear what kind of spacecraft is going up, or which government agency the launch is for. All we really know is that Zuma is scheduled to go into lower Earth orbit on top of a Falcon 9 rocket out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Zuma mission only became public in October, when NASASpaceflight.com reported on documents that SpaceX had filed with the Federal Communications Commission, requesting authorization for a mysterious “Mission 1390.”   More
(Source: The Verge - Nov 16)

CHINESE WEATHER SATELLITE LAUNCHED INTO POLAR ORBIT - A Chinese Long March 4C rocket launched Tuesday with a new polar-orbiting weather observatory named Fengyun 3D, replacing an aging satellite for the China Meteorological Administration. The Fengyun 3D satellite lifted off at 1835 GMT (12:35 p.m. EST) Tuesday from the Taiyuan space center in Shanxi province located in northeastern China. A three-stage Long March 4C rocket boosted the approximately 2.5-ton satellite toward the south from Taiyuan, where launch occurred at 2:35 a.m. local time Wednesday.   More
(Source: - Nov 15)

CYGNUS CARGO SHIP DELIVERS HOLIDAY GOODIES AND SCIENCE GEAR TO SPACE STATION - Orbital ATK, a private spaceflight contracted by NASA to fly cargo to the ISS, named this Cygnus spacecraft the S.S. Gene Cernan in honor of the late NASA astronaut and last person to walk on the moon. After launching from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, on an Antares rocket Sunday (Nov. 12), Cygnus spent about 45 hours catching up to the ISS, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth at a speed of about 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h).    More
(Source: Space.com - Nov 15)

DELTA 2 ROCKET LAUNCH SCRUBBED - United Launch Alliance called off the launch of a Delta 2 rocket from California’s Central Coast early Tuesday after boats ventured into a restricted safety exclusion zone and engineers ran out of time to resolve a technical problem on the launcher. The Delta 2 rocket had only 66 seconds to take off Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, or else launch another day. Engineers selected the short launch window to allow the mission’s JPSS 1 weather satellite payload to enter an optimal orbit circling over Earth’s poles.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 15)

CHINA WILL HAVE SOLE SPACE STATION IN 2020S, BEIJING SAYS - In the 2013 sci-fi blockbuster Gravity, a stranded US astronaut whose spaceship was destroyed by debris during a spacewalk would have fallen through a bottomless abyss, had it not been for a Chinese space station Tiangong (‘Heaven Palace’), which ultimately took her back to earth. In reality, Chinese newspapers are conjecturing with glee that in the 2020s, when the Tiangong is up and running some 350 kilometres above earth in a low orbit, and the International Space Station (ISS) – a multinational aerospace endeavour – is reaching its end of its life    More
(Source: Asia Times - Nov 14)

THE MOST IMPORTANT WEATHER SATELLITE YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF LAUNCHES TO SPACE TUESDAY - After billions of dollars in cost overruns and delays, NASA is planning to launch one of the most important weather satellites ever early Tuesday morning. The Joint Polar Satellite System-1, or JPSS-1, satellite — which will be invaluable for improving forecasting, detecting lost sailors, aiding firefighters, and other applications — is expected to blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:47 a.m. PT, or 4:47 a.m. ET, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket.    More
(Source: Mashable - Nov 14)

LOFT ORBITAL IS LAUNCHING A SPECIALTY SERVICE THAT LEASES SPACE ON SATELLITES - Loft Orbital is the latest entrant, offering a "rideshare service" of buying satellites and then leasing space onboard to multiple customers. The company announced Monday it raised $3.2 million in a recent seed funding round led by Uncork Capital. "We want to make the experience of accessing space as easy as buying cloud services from Amazon Web Services," CEO Antoine de Chassy told CNBC. "Instead of building or buying a satellite for your sensor, just lease space onboard one of our satellites and fly with us."   More
(Source: CNBC - Nov 14)

ORBITAL ATK ROCKET LAUNCHES NASA CARGO TO SPACE STATION IN SPECTACULAR MORNING LIFTOFF - Topped with the International Space Station-bound Cygnus cargo spacecraft, the 139-foot (42.5-meter) Antares rocket lifted off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia at 7:19 a.m. EST (1219 GMT). About 9 minutes later, Cygnus was deployed in low-Earth orbit, where it will spend the next two days chasing after the International Space Station (ISS). "It was great to put a rumble in the air here and to get Cygnus off the ground and on its way to the International Space Station," Dan Hartman, the International Space Station's deputy program manager, said during a post-launch briefing. "It was just a miraculous launch and a flawless countdown."    More
(Source: Space.com - Nov 13)

IF YOU USE WEATHER FORECASTS FOR ANYTHING, YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE JPSS SATELLITE - You probably use weather forecasts all of the time. The military, aviation community, farmers, businesses, and emergency managers certainly do. Most people do not think about the "nuts and bolts" of what goes into their forecasts. Heck, I do not think about the pinch of vanilla or what brand of sugar is in a good slice of apple pie either. If it is good, I just bite and enjoy it. The process of weather forecasting is highly dependent on good observations and computer models that predict changes in the fluid over our heads called the atmosphere. A new satellite scheduled for launch next week is vital to weather forecasting but there is a good chance you have never heard of it.   More
(Source: Forbes - Nov 12)

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