TWO CHINESE ASTRONAUTS BACK ON EARTH - Two Chinese astronauts closed out a month in space Friday with a parachute-assisted landing in northern China’s remote Inner Mongolia territory, a day after the crew departed the Tiangong 2 space lab to begin the trip home. The two-man team finished their experiments this week, a slate of tests and investigations aimed at a range of scientific and engineering disciplines, and cleaned up the Tiangong 2 module before closing hatches leading to their Shenzhou 11 space capsule, the ship they flew into space Oct. 16 atop a Long March 2F rocket. Shenzhou 11 detached from the Tiangong 2 space lab at 0441 GMT Thursday (11:41 p.m. EST Wednesday), then headed for landing in Inner Mongolia’s Siziwang Banner region.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 18)

EUROPE LAUNCHES GALILEO SATELLITE QUARTET - Europe has extended its satellite-navigation system by putting another four spacecraft in orbit. They went up on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, leaving the ground at 10:06 (13:06 GMT). It is the first time Europe's premier launch vehicle has been used to loft Galileo satellites. Normally, they go up on a Russian Soyuz, two at a time. Mission success was declared once the quartet had been safely ejected from Ariane's upper-stage. Controllers immediately made contact with the satellites and confirmed their solar panels were deployed and generating power. The flight brings Galileo's in-orbit constellation to 18 spacecraft.   More
(Source: BBC News - Nov 18)

SATELLITE SET FOR LAUNCH WILL REVOLUTIONIZE U.S. WEATHER FORECASTING - Over a two-year period through 2013, a Harris Corp. facility in Melbourne became one of Brevard County’s biggest power consumers. In a lab there, engineers plugged in several hundred racks holding more than 2,000 computer servers to test equipment essential to the success of a satellite mission launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:42 p.m. ET Saturday. The satellite called GOES-R is expected to revolutionize the nation’s weather forecasting capabilities, dramatically improving the quality and speed of images taken from more than 22,000 miles above the planet.   More
(Source: USA Today - Nov 18)

LIFTOFF! TRULY INTERNATIONAL CREW LAUNCHES TO SPACE STATION - A trio of space travelers from the U.S., Russia and France launched into space Thursday (Nov.17), to kick off a six-month mission to the International Space Station. The three-person Expedition 50/51 crew includes Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Oleg Novitskiy, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and the European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet, who will become the first French astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station. Tightly packed in a Soyuz MS-03 space capsule atop a Soyuz FG rocket, the team lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT). About 9 minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz capsule arrived in low-Earth orbit.   More
(Source: Space.com - Nov 18)

SPACEX JUST ASKED PERMISSION TO LAUNCH 4,425 SATELLITES — MORE THAN CURRENTLY ORBIT EARTH - SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by the Mars-hungry tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, just made a big move to enshroud the planet in high-speed internet coverage. On November 15, the company filed a lengthy application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 4,425 satellites. (We first heard about the filing through the r/SpaceX community on Reddit.) That is a hell of a lot of satellites.    More
(Source: Business Insider - Nov 17)

NASA, RUSSIA SET FLIGHTS FOR TRIMMED-DOWN SPACE STATION CREW - With Thursday's (Nov. 17) launch of three new crewmembers, the International Space Station (ISS) will be returned to full staffing — but not for long. Beginning with the next Soyuz launch, in March 2017, Russia is cutting one cosmonaut post from the station crew and doesn't plan to restore the job until a new module is launched, in 2018. Cosmonauts typically comprise half the station's six-member crew, but "right now, we don't need it," Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who now oversees human spaceflight for the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said in an interview at the International Astronautical Congress, which was held in late September in Guadalajara, Mexico.   More
(Source: Space.com - Nov 17)

SPACE JOURNAL: CHINESE ASTRONAUTS ACCEPT 1ST EARTH-SPACE INTERVIEW - Chinese astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong are currently on a 33-day space journey and acting as Xinhua special correspondents. On Tuesday, they talked with their copy desk on earth for the first time. Li Keyong (associate director of Xinhua All-Media Service): Hello, mission commander Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong!    More
(Source: Xinhua - Nov 17)

SOYUZ CREW LAUNCHER ROLLED OUT FOR LIFTOFF FROM KAZAKHSTAN - The Soyuz booster that will send the International Space Station’s next three residents into orbit later this week rolled out of an integration hangar early Monday and rode a railroad car to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket will lift off at 2020 GMT (3:20 p.m. EST) Thursday from Baikonur, heading to orbit on a two-day chase of the space station, setting up for a radar-guided rendezvous and docking Saturday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 16)

EO-79/FUNCUBE-3 NOW AVAILABLE FOR AMATEUR RADIO USE - The EO-79/FUNcube-3 satellite has transitioned to Amateur Radio service, now that its primary mission has been completed. AMSAT-UK and AMSAT-NL have announced that the FUNcube U/V transponder on the 2U CubeSat QB50p1 has been activated with a regular schedule. Due to power budget constraints, the transponder cannot be operational 24/7, and an orbit-specific schedule has been developed. The transponder will commence operation 27 minutes after the spacecraft enters sunlight and remain active for 25 minutes. This schedule may be modified in the weeks ahead, as experience dictates.   More
(Source: ARRL - Nov 16)

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