THREE-MAN SPACE STATION CREW RETURNS TO EARTH - The final minutes of the return to Earth were seen on live television provided by recovery crews near the landing zone, showing the capsule descending through a cloudless, slightly hazy sky under a big orange-and-white parachute. The descent module landed just out of view over the horizon, its solid-fuel "soft landing" rockets kicking up billowing clouds of dust as they ignited an instant before touchdown. "Touchdown confirmed," said NASA mission control commentator Rob Navias at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Touchdown right on the button ... on the steppe of Kazakhstan.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 12)

ARIANE 5 LAUNCHES WITH OPTUS 10 AND MEASAT-3B - An Ariane 5 ECA has successfully launched two telecommunication satellites on Thursday. Optus 10 and MEASAT-3b both rode uphill on the Arianespace workhorse out of the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, following lift off late in the launch window – due to two technical holds – at 22:05 GMT. The Ariane 5 ECA (Cryogenic Evolution type A) - the most powerful version in the Ariane 5 range – is being used for this flight. The Ariane 5 ECA is an improved Ariane 5 Generic launcher. Although it has the same general architecture, a number of major changes were made to the basic structure of the Ariane 5 Generic version to increase thrust and enable it to carry heavier payloads into orbit.    More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Sep 12)

RUSSIA’S DEFENSE MINISTRY REFUTES ALLEGATIONS ABOUT MILITARY SATELLITE’S EXPLOSION OVER US - Russia’s ministry of defense has refuted allegations about an explosion of a Russian military satellite over the United States that were circulated in the American and Russian media. “Russia’s orbiting cluster is operating a regular regime and is permanently monitored by space control facilities of the aerospace defense,” Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov told journalists on Tuesday. “One can only guess about the condition representatives of the so-called American Meteor Society were in when they identified a luminescent phenomenon high up in the sky as a Russian military satellite.” He said that most probably such reports could be explained by the US security services’ attempts to find whereabouts of a space object they had lost.   More
(Source: ITAR-TASS - Sep 10)

SPACEX, LORAL WIN BULGARIAN BROADCAST SATELLITE DEAL - Bulgaria's first communications satellite will be built and launched in the United States with financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, officials said Monday. Space Systems/Loral will manufacture the television broadcasting spacecraft in Palo Alto, Calif., and a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the satellite in 2016. The satellite will broadcast direct-to-home television signals in the Balkans and other European regions for Bulgaria Sat, an affiliate of Bulgarian television and mobile operator Bulsatcom, Space Systems/Loral said in a press release Monday.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 10)

MILITARY WANTS HELP TO LAUNCH SATELLITE-FIXING ROBOTS INTO SPACE - The U.S. military and commercial companies alike maintain many space satellites in geostationary orbit, meaning they stay over the same point on the Earth’s surface. But there’s a catch: While the satellites help with everything from telecommunications to tracking the weather, it is very difficult to maintain them because they are stationed about 22,300 miles high. “Satellites in GEO are essentially unreachable with current technology,” said officials with the Pentagon’s Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. “As a result, these satellites are designed to operate without any upgrades or repairs for their entire lifespan—a methodology that demands increased size, complexity and cost.”   More
(Source: Washington Post - Sep 9)

CLANDESTINE SPY SATELLITE LAUNCHED BY CHINA - A clandestine satellite launched on top of a Long March 4B rocket Monday to collect intelligence for the Chinese government. The Yaogan 21 satellite lifted off at 0322 GMT Monday (11:22 p.m. EDT Sunday) from the Taiyuan space center in northern China's Shanxi province, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Liftoff was at 11:22 a.m. Beijing time. The Long March 4B launcher also carried a secondary payload named Tiantuo 2 designed and built by the National University of Defense, Xinhua reported. Monday's liftoff marked the fourth space launch by China in a month after a lull in launches in the first half of the year.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 9)

SPACEX ACHIEVES BACK-TO-BACK SUCCESSES FOR ASIASAT - Putting on a late summer sky show along Florida's Space Coast, a Falcon 9 rocket climbed into space after midnight Sunday with a commercial communications satellite to connect growing markets in China and Southeast Asia. The mission began at 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT) Sunday with the fiery ignition of the 224-foot-tall launcher's nine Merlin first stage engines. Once the kerosene-burning engines ramped up to full power, the Falcon 9 rocket soared away from Cape Canaveral atop a flickering pillar of red-hot exhaust, piercing through clouds before arcing east over the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket's booster stage gave way to a single-engine upper stage about three minutes after liftoff, beginning the first of a pair of burns to propel the nearly five-ton AsiaSat 6 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit, a waypoint on its way to a permanent operating post fixed 22,300 miles over the equator.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 8)

CHINESE-BRAZILIAN SATELLITE CBERS-4 SCHEDULED FOR LAUNCH ON 7 DECEMBER - The Chinese-Brazilian satellite CBERS-4, part of the “China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite” programme is scheduled to be launched on 7 December, from the launch site in China, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil . The statement signed by Antonio Carlos Pereira de Oliveira Jr., coordinator of the Space Segment of the CBERS Programme, said that “INPE and CAST [Chinese Academy of Space Technology] experts have been working hard to launch CBERS-4 on 7 December, and transport of the satellite to the launch site is scheduled for 15 October.”   More
(Source: Macauhub - Sep 7)

NASA TELEVISION TO BROADCAST RETURN OF SPACE STATION CREW - Three crew members aboard the International Space Station are scheduled to end almost six months on the orbiting laboratory on September 10 and NASA Television will provide complete coverage. Expedition 40 Commander Steve Swanson of NASA and Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will undock their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 7:02 p.m. EDT Sept. 10, for a landing in Kazakhstan at 10:25 p.m. (8:25 a.m. Sept. 11, Kazakh time). Their return will end 169 days in space since launching from Kazakhstan March 26 for a mission that covered almost 72 million miles in orbit.    More
(Source: Southgate Amateur Radio Club - Sep 7)

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