STICKY, EAGLE-EYED, EXPLOSIVE SCIENCE PREPPED FOR SPACE STATION LAUNCH - An unmanned Cygnus cargo spacecraft launching tomorrow (March 22) is ready to lug more up to the International Space Station than ever before, including experiments primed to spy on meteors, 3D print rare parts and start a huge fire. The commercial spacecraft, built by Orbital ATK, is scheduled for launch at 11:05 p.m. EST (0305 on March 23 GMT) and will approach the station for three days before it's snapped up by the space station's robotic arm. Then, the space station crew will begin to unload the fresh crop of supplies and experiments - nearly 3.5 tons of new gear for the orbiting laboratory. More (Source: Space.com - Mar 22)
SPACE ODYSSEY: TIM PEAKE’S MOST SPELLBINDING PICTURES FROM THE ISS SO FAR (PHOTOS) - British astronaut Tim Peake has officially taken over the mantle of the International Space Station’s in-house photographer since US astronaut Scott Kelly returned from his #yearinspace. Peake, who’s been at the International Space Station (ISS) since December as part of the six-month Principia Mission, has been captivating social media audiences with his mysterious and often breathtaking snaps. He most recently stunned audiences with images of what look like clusters of green emeralds lighting up the night on, quite fittingly, St Patrick’s Day. More (Source: RT - Mar 21)
SKY'S THE LIMIT FOR IRVINE HIGH SCHOOLERS AS THEY SEEK TO SEND A SATELLITE INTO ORBIT - Talk about shooting for the moon: The countdown is on for Irvine high school students to build and launch a mini satellite that will orbit Earth a year from now. If successful, the ambitious program dubbed IRVINE01 could mark the first time American high school students put an operational satellite into orbit. And the launch could take place from a site in Russia, giving it an international flavor. Called a CubeSat, the satellite will be about the size of a milk carton cut in half and weigh less than 3 pounds. Plans call for a low orbit at about 350 miles, while students run flight experiments and photograph the moon. More (Source: OCRegister - Mar 20)
NASA ASTRONAUT, TWO COSMONAUTS ARRIVE AT SPACE STATION FOR SIX-MONTH STAY - One American and two Russians blasted off for their six-month stay on the International Space Station Friday evening from Kazakhstan. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft lifted off with 9,000 pounds of thrust carrying the three astronauts from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 5:26 p.m. EST. The Expedition 47 and 48 crew include veteran NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin. More (Source: Orlando Sentinel - Mar 19)
NEW US-RUSSIAN CREW LAUNCHES TOWARD SPACE STATION ON SOYUZ - A Russian Soyuz rocket launched a joint U.S.-Russian crew to the International Space Station Friday (March 18), a space team that includes an astronaut aiming to break an American spaceflight record recently set by NASA's year-in-space astronaut Scott Kelly. American astronaut Jeff Williams of NASA and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Aleksey Ovchinin of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) launched toward the space station at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio, riding in a Soyuz space capsule, is expected to rendezvous with the space station after a 6-hour journey, with docking set for 11:11 p.m. EDT (0311 GMT on March 19), according to NASA officials. More (Source: Space.com - Mar 19)
NEW SATELLITE HELPS SCIENTISTS TRACK EL NINO - NASA scientists have a new eye-in-the-sky to help them measure El Nino. The Jason-3 satellite has been up and running for a few weeks now and already it is snapping important images of the wet weather pattern's effects around the globe. From 800 miles away, the equipment has the ability to measure the height of the oceans within an accuracy of one inch. For Southern Californians who thirst for more rain in the drought-stricken region, scientists caution not to call El Nino a flop just by what they've seen in their own backyards. More (Source: KABC-TV - Mar 18)
NEXT SPACE STATION CREW SET FOR FRIDAY LAUNCH, DOCKING - With Scott Kelly back on Earth after a record-setting voyage, his NASA backup, three-flight veteran Jeffrey Williams, is poised for launch from Kazakhstan Friday to kick off a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station. The Soyuz TMA-20M/46S spacecraft, with rookie commander Alexey Ovchinin at the controls, flanked on the right by Williams and on the left by flight engineer Oleg Skripochka, is set for liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 5:26:39 p.m. EDT (GMT-5; 3:26 a.m. Saturday local time). That's roughly the moment Earth's rotation carries the launch pad into the plane of the space station's orbit, which is required for the Soyuz to catch up with the outpost. More (Source: CBS News - Mar 18)
U.S. ALLIES WORKING ON FRAMEWORK TO BUILD A SIXTH MUOS SATELLITE - A consortium of U.S. allies, led by Canada, could reach an agreement early next year to build a sixth Mobile User Objective System narrowband communications satellite, a top Lockheed Martin executive said March 15. By funding a sixth satellite, the participating countries would get full access to the U.S. Navy’s MUOUS constellation, which is designed to provide smartphone-like communications almost anywhere on the globe. A similar model of allied participation has allowed the U.S. Air Force to expand the size of its Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellite constellation in recent years. More (Source: SpaceNews - Mar 17)
IS IRAN PREPARING FOR A SATELLITE LAUNCH? - Iran may attempt to launch a satellite into space soon, recent imagery collected by a high-definition camera on the International Space Station suggests. The imagery — which you can see in this annotated video — shows heightened activity at Iran's Imam Khomeini launch facility, say representatives of Vancouver, Canada-based Urthecast, which owns the Iris camera that captured the footage from the exterior of the space station on March 2. The Iris imagery "shows increased activity in the area, suggesting that a launch of the Simorgh SLV rocket — built to send satellites into space — is fast approaching," Urthecast representatives wrote in a statement. More (Source: Space.com - Mar 17)
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