FAULTY TRANSMITTER DELAYS ATLAS V LAUNCH OF SPY SATELLITE FROM CAPE CANAVERAL - United Launch Alliance early Saturday waived off a third attempt to launch an Atlas V rocket and spy agency mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, citing trouble with a telemetry transmitter on the rocket. No now launch date had been announced as of early Saturday evening. "A new launch date will be released when it’s established," ULA said in a statement after the latest countdown was scrubbed around 1 a.m. More (Source: Florida Today - Oct 8)
LONG MARCH 2D TO DELIVER VENEZUELAN VRSS-2 EARTH-OBSERVING SATELLITE INTO ORBIT - China is preparing for its second orbital mission after a three-month-long period with no launches. This time it will send a Long March 2D rocket into space carrying an Earth-observation satellite for Venezuela. Liftoff is planned for sometime between 12:05 a.m. and 12:33 a.m. EDT (04:05 and 04:33 GMT) Oct. 9, 2017, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu Province. More (Source: SpaceFlight Insider - Oct 8)
EUROPEAN SATELLITE SPLASHDOWN IN CANADIAN ARCTIC PROBABLY TOXIC - Europe's space agency is defending plans to launch two satellites that would drop a rocket stage likely to contain highly toxic fuel in some of the most ecologically sensitive waters of the Canadian Arctic. Inuit have said those plans treat seas teeming with life as a garbage dump. But the agency said Friday that next week's launch will have little effect on the North Water Polynya between Baffin Island and Greenland. More (Source: CTV News - Oct 8)
THE WORLD'S FIRST SCIENTIFIC SATELLITE IS STILL IN ORBIT - Nearly 60 years ago, the US Navy launched Vanguard-1 as a response to the Soviet Sputnik. Six decades on, it’s still circling our planet. From his desk at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, space debris analyst Tim Flohrer keeps track of the 23,000 or so catalogued objects currently orbiting the Earth. They range from spacecraft and satellites – some working, most not – to discarded rocket stages and fragmented space hardware. All of them the result of 60 years of space exploration. More (Source: BBC News - Oct 7)
SPACE STATION CROSSES MOON'S FACE IN STUNNING PHOTO - The International Space Station (ISS) crosses the face of the nearly full moon in a gorgeous composite image snapped by astrophotographer Alexander Krivenyshev. Krivenyshev, president of WorldTimeZone.com, took the pictures comprising the composite from Edgewater, New Jersey, on Wednesday night (Oct. 4), a day before the Harvest Moon took full effect. The ISS was silhouetted against the lunar disk for a mere 0.86 seconds Wednesday night, according to Krivenyshev, who has also captured the station transiting the face of the sun. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 7)
SPACEX DELAYS FALCON 9 LAUNCH OF TV BROADCAST SATELLITE - Liftoff of a previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with a European-built television broadcast satellite has been pushed back from Saturday until at least next Wednesday night, officials said. The Falcon 9 launcher was supposed to take off with the SES 11/EchoStar 105 communications satellite Saturday evening, but two SES officials said Thursday that the mission would be postponed. An SES official familiar with the launch campaign said liftoff from pad 39A was now expected no earlier than next Wednesday, Oct. 11. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 6)
SPACE STATION ASTRONAUTS ARE TAKING A SPACEWALK TODAY: WATCH IT LIVE - Two astronauts will take a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) today (Oct. 5), kicking off a trifecta of spacewalks set to take place over the next two weeks. In this first spacewalk, NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hei will replace an aging machine called the Latching End Effector (LEE) at the end of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS), or Canadarm2. The LEE works like a hand at the end of the robotic arm and grapples incoming cargo spacecraft like SpaceX's Dragon and Orbital ATK's Cygnus. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 6)
SPACEWALK 360: RT RELEASES FIRST-EVER PANORAMIC VIDEO OF MAN IN OUTER SPACE (VIDEO) - RT has released the first-ever 360-degree footage shot by man in outer space, putting viewers in the shoes of two Russian cosmonauts launching nanosatellites from outside the International Space Station (ISS). The video, which shows out-of-this-world views of Planet Earth, is the first time that the so-called extravehicular activity (EVA) has been filmed in 360. The immersive new format previously helped viewers explore the ISS modules as part of the Space 360 project. More (Source: RT - Oct 5)
US LAUNCHING SPY SATELLITE EARLY THURSDAY: WATCH IT LIVE - The United States is launching another spy satellite on a secret mission early Thursday morning (Oct. 5), and you can watch the liftoff live. The NROL-52 satellite is scheduled to launch atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:07 a.m. EDT (0807 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com beginning at 3:47 a.m. EDT (0747 GMT), courtesy of ULA. You can also follow the action live directly at ULA's website: http://www.ulalaunch.com More (Source: Space.com - Oct 5)
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