INDIA TO RESUME SATELLITE LAUNCHES BY DECEMBER - India will resume launching satellites in November or December, unfazed by the failure of its rocket in deploying a spare navigation satellite in the Earth's lower orbit on August 31, said a top official on Friday. "We will resume the launches by November or December, with one of the remote sensing satellites though we are yet to finalise with which," said A.S. Kiran Kumar, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).   More
(Source: Times Now - Sep 17)

NASA TV BROADCASTS DRAGON RELEASE EARLY SUNDAY - NASA Television coverage of the departure of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the International Space Station is set to begin early Sunday morning, Sept. 17 at 4:30 a.m. EDT. Watch the spacecraft departure live at http://www.nasa.gov/live Dragon has been loaded with more than 3,800 pounds of cargo and research to be returned to Earth and its internal hatch closed. The spacecraft is targeted for release at 4:40 a.m.   More
(Source: NASA - Sep 17)

NASA'S ROBOTIC 'SNIFFER' CONFIRMS SPACE STATION LEAK, REPAIR - In recent operations on the International Space Station, robotic operators were twice able to test and confirm the ability of the Robotic External Leak Locator (RELL) to "smell" in space. Using the RELL instruments, operators successfully located a small leak from the station's ammonia coolant loop, and confirmed that it was not a safety concern. Later they were able to return and more precisely characterize the leak. This valuable data helped station operators vent and isolate the leaking line from the coolant loop and successfully stop the leak.    More
(Source: Phys.org - Sep 16)

THIS ULTRATHIN CRAFT COULD SOON ENVELOP AND DESTROY SPACE JUNK - Think of the latest idea of collecting space junk as something akin to a hungry tiger pouncing on its prey. Aerospace Corporation says its Brane Craft will wrap itself around debris orbiting Earth and drag it back down through the atmosphere, causing it to burn up and never again threaten satellites or astronauts. The project recently received a second round of funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which funds far-out ideas that remain years away from launch — if they get there at all.   More
(Source: Space.com - Sep 15)

ORBITAL ATK BEGINS ASSEMBLY OF INDUSTRY'S FIRST COMMERCIAL IN-SPACE SATELLITE SERVICING SYSTEM - Orbital ATK reports significant progress on the industry's first commercial in-space satellite servicing system. The (MEV-1) spacecraft successfully completed its critical design review earlier this year and is now in production with about 75% of the platform and payload components already delivered to the company's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Virginia. The spacecraft will begin system-level testing in spring 2018 with launch planned late next year. MEV-1 will provide satellite life extension services to its anchor customer, Intelsat S.A., beginning in early 2019.   More
(Source: SpaceDaily - Sep 15)

NASA'S TERRA SATELLITE SPIES TYPHOON TALIM'S LARGE EYE - On Sept. 14 at 0215 UTC (Sept. 13 at 10:15 p.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer of MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Typhoon Talim. The image revealed a large, open eye surrounded by powerful thunderstorms as the storm moved through the East China Sea. The southern extent of Talim's clouds were over northern Taiwan at the time of the image. The MODIS image was created by NASA's MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Sept. 14, Typhoon Talim's maximum sustained winds were near 120 knots (138.1 mph/222 kph).    More
(Source: Phys.org - Sep 15)

ASIASAT PLANNING SMALL HTS SATELLITE TO COVER CHINA - Hong Kong-based fleet operator AsiaSat will soon order a “modest”-size high-throughput satellite (HTS) that will leverage the company’s access to the Chinese market, Barrie Woolston, AsiaSat’s chief commercial officer, said Sept. 14. “We’ve looked long and hard at what we can use existing capacity for, and when we will make the leap into HTS,” Woolston said here at the World Satellite Business Week conference. “We are at that stage now where we are specifying a new satellite … that will hit the streets in 36 months time.”   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 15)

CHINA’S CARGO SPACECRAFT COMPLETES FAST-DOCKING WITH SPACE LAB TIANGONG-2 - China’s first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 completed an automated fast-docking with experimental space lab Tiangong-2 which is currently in orbit. Controlled from Earth, Tianzhou-1 began to approach Tiangong-2 at 5:24PM (local time) yesterday and it took six and a half hours to complete the fast-docking with the space lab. It was the third docking between the two spacecraft using fast-docking technology. Previously, it took about two days to dock, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.   More
(Source: Livemint - Sep 15)

US-RUSSIAN CREW ARRIVES SPACE STATION AFTER QUICK 6-HOUR TRIP - Two NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut successfully launched toward the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday (Sept. 12). NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin blasted off atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:17 p.m. EDT (2127 GMT). Packed tightly inside their Soyuz MS-06 space capsule, the trio began their 6-hour trip to the ISS after a flawless launch sequence. "Everything is nominal on board [and] the crew is doing fine," a translator for Russia's Mission Control Center in Moscow repeatedly announced during a live webcast as the Soyuz MS-06 soared into the sky.    More
(Source: Space.com - Sep 13)

Previous Next