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)
ATLAS 5 TO EXECUTE ANOTHER SPACE-LIFT MISSION FOR U.S. SPY SATELLITE AGENCY - An early bird rocket launch from the Florida spaceport will take to the skies before dawn Thursday when an Atlas 5 lofts a classified U.S. government satellite. United Launch Alliance will send up the clandestine NROL-52 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency responsible for the country’s fleet of spy satellites. The Launch readiness Review was passed Monday. Rollout of the rocket to the Complex 41 pad occurs Tuesday. Thursday’s liftoff is scheduled for 4:07 a.m. EDT (0807 GMT), and weather forecasters give a 60 percent chance of acceptable launch conditions. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 4)
SPUTNIK AT SIXTY: FIVE FACTS TO KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD’S FIRST SATELLITE - The launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957, started the space race between the Soviet Union and United States. Both countries were working fast to see how they could send man-made objects into orbit, and in response to US President Dwight Eisenhower’s pledge to send an American satellite into orbit in 1957 to celebrate the International Geophysical Year, the Soviet space engineers raced to launch their satellite first. More (Source: euronews - Oct 4)
NEW SATELLITE TO HELP FORECASTERS BETTER TRACK, MONITOR ARIZONA WILDFIRES - The National Weather Service will be able to be able to more easily and reliably forecast wildfires in Arizona, thanks to new satellite imaging data. The National Weather Service will be able to use the GOES-16 satellite to help monitor wildfires. The satellite has already made news for forecasting recent hurricanes with its Advanced Baseline Imager. The imager, also known as the ABI, is “much improved for monitoring wildfires,” said Tim Schmit, a satellite research meteorologist with NOAA. More (Source: KTAR.com - Oct 3)
NASA PHOTOS OF PUERTO RICO SHOW HOW MARIA WIPED OUT POWER ON THE ISLAND - Puerto Rico’s extensive power loss in the wake of Hurricane Maria has been captured in newly released images from one of NASA’s Earth-orbiting satellites. The intense Category 4 storm left practically all of the 3.4 million US citizens in the country without access to electrical power, and many are still waiting for the lights to come back on. These new before and after nighttime photos show just how much of Puerto Rico’s biggest cities remained in the dark up to a week after Maria. The photos were taken by NASA and NOAA’s Suomi-NPP satellite, a weather probe that monitors the long-term effects of climate change, natural disasters, air pollution, and more. More (Source: The Verge - Oct 3)
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