SCHOOL KIDS LAUNCH OUT OF THIS WORLD SCIENCE PROJECT - Students at an elementary school in Virginia are very excited, and the reason for their excitement is out of this world -- a tiny satellite being launched Monday by astronauts at the International Space Station Thirteen-year-old Rebecca el Choueiry helped build the satellite. "I think it's awesome!" she said. "I'm really excited that's it's finally up in space." And now St. Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington is the first grade school in the nation to put a satellite in orbit.   More
(Source: CBS News - May 18)

ÑUSAT-1 SSB/CW TRANSPONDER SATELLITE - The launch of ÑUSAT-1, the second AMSAT ARGENTINA amateur satellite on May 30, will mark an extraordinary event for our Institution and fostering of hope for satellite community. As we quoted when the announcement of the launching of this experiment, Amsat Argentina has been working for several years to keep alive the dream of many Argentine amateurs to get back into Space with their own satellite as a follow-on of the legendary 1990’s LUSAT-1, reaping the benefits of Technological advancement of our days.   More
(Source: AMSAT-UK - May 18)

SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY TELLS US EXACTLY HOW WELL A BUSINESS PERFORMS - Driving past your neighbor’s house on a weekend, you see a bunch of cars parked outside and think: “Oh, they have a lot of guests. They must be having a party.” Or when the opposite is true — when there are no cars parked outside on a holiday and you think: “Poor people, they are all alone.” Counting cars. That’s what a Midtown Manhattan company called RS Metrics does for a living. Only it doesn’t drive by shopping malls or office complexes — or your neighbor’s house — to see how many cars are parked outside.   More
(Source: New York Post - May 17)

THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION HAS MADE ITS 100,000TH ORBIT OF EARTH, A DISTANCE EQUIVALENT TO 10 R - It's 100,000 laps around Earth and counting for the International Space Station. The space station reached the orbital milestone — 17 ½ years in the making — Monday morning. NASA said these 100,000 orbits are akin to traveling more than 2.6 billion miles. That's equivalent to 10 round trips to Mars, or almost one way to Neptune. Each orbit takes about 90 minutes; 16 orbits comprise a station day. Astronauts have been living continuously aboard the 250-mile-high complex since 2000. Construction began two years before that. Since then, 222 people have lived or visited there, the vast majority of them— 189 — men, according to NASA. Altogether, there have been 47 permanent crews representing the U.S., Russian, Canadian, Japanese and European space agencies.   More
(Source: U.S. News & World Report - May 17)

CHINESE ROCKET LOFTS GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE SATELLITE - A Long March 2D booster fired into space Sunday from a remote Chinese spaceport in the Gobi Desert, delivering a military spy satellite to a 640-kilometer-high (400-mile) perch in polar orbit. The two-stage Long March 2D rocket took off at 0243 GMT Sunday (10:43 p.m. EDT Saturday) from the Jiuquan launch center in northwest China’s Inner Mongolia province. The liftoff occurred at 10:43 a.m. Beijing time, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. The 41-meter (134-foot-tall) liquid-fueled rocket veered south from Jiuquan to put its payload into a sun-synchronous orbit. Tracking data released by the U.S. military indicated the spacecraft reached an orbit with an apogee, or high point, of about 653 kilometers (405 miles), and a low point, or perigee of 625 kilometers (388 miles).   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 16)

NEW YORK FROM SPACE: INCREDIBLE IMAGE FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - The American astronaut, Tim Kopra, has tweeted an image of Manhattan taken from the International Space Station. The image shows the New York borough in incredible detail. Less than six hours after leaving the International Space Station, the Dragon cargo carrier landed in the Pacific on Wednesday, a few hundred miles off the Southern California coast. SpaceX reported a good splashdown, with three red-and-white striped parachutes slowing the final descent.   More
(Source: Telegraph.co.uk - May 15)

LAUNCH OF RUSSIA’S GLONASS-M SATELLITE RESCHEDULED TO MAY 29 - The launch of Glonass-M satellite No. 53 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in north Russia has been rescheduled from May 21 to May 29, Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems CEO Nikolay Testoyedov said on Friday. The launch postponement has nothing to do with the satellite’s condition, he said. "The launch is planned for May 29 not because of the satellite. This is the decision of the state commission. Today we have received a notice that the launch will take place on May 29. I don’t know the reason for that but this surely has nothing to do with the satellite," Testoyedov said.    More
(Source: TASS - May 14)

THE MYSTERY OF THE HITOMI SATELLITE IS FINALLY SOLVED - In March, a satellite designed to teach us about some of the most mysterious forces in the universe was brought crashing down to Earth. Hitomi, or ASTRO-H, launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Feb. 17, was discovered to have broken into several pieces on March 26. After scrambling to find out what had happened to the mission, which included contributions from the United States and eight other nations, JAXA named the satellite a lost cause. It turns out, the loss of the satellite came from a combination of a software update and a cosmic-scale communication problem.    More
(Source: Manufacturing.net - May 14)

BOEING DELAYS FIRST CREWED CST-100 FLIGHT TO 2018 - Boeing has delayed the first crewed flight of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle until early 2018, later than NASA’s original deadline, because of a series of technical issues and new requirements that the company argues are typical for an aerospace development program. The current development schedule, Boeing spokeswoman Rebecca Regan said May 12, calls for a pad abort test of the spacecraft’s launch abort system in October 2017. That will be followed by an uncrewed orbital test flight of the spacecraft in December 2017. A crewed flight, carrying one NASA astronaut and one Boeing test pilot to the International Space Station, is now scheduled for February 2018.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - May 14)

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