SPACEX SUPPLY SHIP REACHES SPACE STATION - A refurbished SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with 6,000 pounds of supplies and equipment was captured by astronauts operating the International Space Station's robot arm Monday to wrap up a two-day rendezvous. The Dragon, making its second flight to the station -- a first for SpaceX -- pulled up to within about 30 feet of the station and then stood by while astronaut Jack Fischer, operating the robot arm from inside the multi-window cupola work station, locked onto a grapple fixture at 9:52 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).   More
(Source: CBS News - Jun 6)

RUSSIA TO LAUNCH NEW-GENERATION NAVIGATION SATELLITE NEXT YEAR - The first new-generation navigation satellite Glonass-K2 will be launched from the Plesetsk spaceport in north Russia next year, Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems Company, the satellite producer, said on its website on Monday. The spacecraft’s new automated control system will be used at the launch and technical compounds of the Plesetsk cosmodrome. The first launch of the Glonass-K2 newest navigation satellite from the spaceport is expected in 2018," the company said in a statement.    More
(Source: TASS - Jun 6)

INDIA’S MOST POWERFUL ROCKET LAUNCHES SATELLITE INTO ORBIT - India launched a communication satellite using its most powerful rocket on Monday, improving its prospects of winning a bigger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry and its hopes of a manned mission. The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk III, or "Fat Boy", lifted off from the Sriharikota space center in southern India at 5.28 p.m. (1158 GMT) in clear blue skies.   More
(Source: Reuters - Jun 6)

GSAT-19 LAUNCH: A COMMUNICATION SATELLITE, A MONSTER ROCKET AND A GAMECHANGING EXPERIMENT - India is all set to launch communication satellite GSAT-19 into space today using a monster rocket. The satellite launch vehicle--the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III (GSLV Mk-III)--is the heaviest rocket till date. Its weight is equal to that of five fully-loaded Boeing Jumbo Jets or as much as 200 fully grown elephants. "All activities for our GSLV-Mark III launch tomorrow are going on in Sriharikota, expecting launch at 5:28 pm," said AS Kiran Kumar, chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday.   More
(Source: India Today - Jun 5)

S.S. JOHN GLENN FREIGHTER DEPARTS SPACE STATION AFTER SUCCESSFUL CARGO DELIVERY - The Cygnus commercial logistics vehicle departed the International Space Station this morning for a week-long free-flight filled with autonomous science tasks before re-entry. Owing to a rejiggered schedule that optimizes astronauts’ workload, the unberthing occurred six weeks ahead of the original plan. A brief window opened in the crew’s timeline, and flight controllers decided to squeeze in the Cygnus release now instead of waiting until July 16. The timing became available when bad weather scuttled the launch of the next SpaceX Dragon cargo ship’s launch from Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, delaying its arrival at the station until Monday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 4)

REUSED DRAGON CARGO CAPSULE LAUNCHED ON JOURNEY TO SPACE STATION - A refurbished robotic Dragon spaceship rocketed into orbit from Florida on Saturday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher, hauling nearly 6,000 pounds of crew provisions and biological, astrophysics and space technology experiments on a two-day trip to the International Space Station. The unpiloted capsule soared into a late afternoon sky from launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 5:07:38 p.m. EDT (2107:38 GMT) Saturday, two days later than planned after a thunderstorm prevented liftoff Thursday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 4)

EAST COASTERS -- WAKE UP EARLY FOR A LIGHT SHOW IN THE SKY, THANKS TO NASA - If you live along the Eastern Seaboard and wake up early Saturday you could be treated to a colorful sky hours before sunrise lights up the horizon. Blue-green and red clouds might be visible in the predawn sky from New York to North Carolina, thanks to a NASA rocket that will be launched from Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia. The Terrier-Improved Malumute sounding rocket is scheduled for launch between 4:26 a.m. and 4:41 a.m. ET. Sounding rockets, by the way, have been used for over 40 years to carry science payloads on brief, 5-20 minute missions to space.   More
(Source: CNN - Jun 3)

SOYUZ WITH TWO-MAN CREW LANDS SAFELY IN KAZAKHSTAN - Leaving crewmate Peggy Whitson behind in orbit for an extended mission, a Russian cosmonaut and his French co-pilot undocked from the International Space Station early Friday and plunged back to Earth, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a 196-day mission. Under a clear early evening sky, Soyuz MS-03 commander Oleg Novitskiy and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, tightly strapped into their seats in the ferry ship’s crew module, descended under a large orange and white parachute before settling to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown 90 miles east of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 10:10 a.m. EDT (8:10 p.m. local time).   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 3)

AMATEUR RADIO BIRDS-1 CUBESAT CONSTELLATION - The BIRDS-1 constellation consists of five 1U CubeSats (BIRD-B, BIRD-J, BIRD-G, BIRD-M and BIRD-N). They are planned to launch the ISS on a SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-11 on June 1, 2017. The satellites are made of the exactly same design including the radio frequencies to be used and will be deployed from the ISS later in the year.   More
(Source: AMSAT UK - Jun 2)

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