BOLDEN DOWNPLAYS IMPACT OF UKRAINE CRISIS ON NASA - The Obama administration's $17.5 billion budget request for NASA in fiscal 2015 will maintain American leadership on the high frontier, agency Administrator Charles Bolden said Tuesday, urging Congress to fully fund development of commercial manned spacecraft to end U.S. reliance on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Bolden said he did not expect the current crisis in Ukraine to impact space station operations, adding that "right now, everything is normal in our relationship with the Russians."    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 6)

SPACE STATION ORBIT TO BE RAISED AHEAD OF NEW MANNED MISSION - The orbit of the International Space Station will be raised next week by 1.5 kilometers to ensure safe docking of a Russian manned spacecraft, a space industry source said Tuesday. The thrusters on Russia’s Progress space freighter, currently docked with the ISS, will be fired up at 7:54 a.m. Moscow time [3:54 GMT] on March 13 and will work for 218 seconds, giving the station a boost of 0.49 meters per second, the source said. As a result, the average altitude of the ISS, which currently vacillates between 412 and 430 kilometers, will be increased by 1,500 meters, the official said.   More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Mar 6)

SA SATELLITE ENCOUNTERS SPACE DEBRIS - After three months in orbit, SA's first cube satellite, developed by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and launched from Russia on 21 November 2013, experienced two very close encounters with defunct satellites in the last two days of its trip. The US Joint Space Operations Centre in California notified the South African National Space Agency (Sansa) last week that the Zacube-1 (TshepisoSat) nano-type satellite was on "close approach" with the defunct (Russian) Cosmos 2151 satellite.   More
(Source: ITWeb - Mar 5)

SPY-SATELLITE PLAN KEEPS EYE ON THREATS IN THE SKY - A newly declassified military space program will place satellites on the lookout for threats to national-security spacecraft high above Earth. Four satellites launched in pairs, the first late this year from Cape Canaveral on a Delta IV rocket, will provide new eyes on exactly what is flying in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles up. And should an adversary's spacecraft move too close to U.S. assets — to learn more about them or potentially launch an orbital attack — the action won't go unnoticed.   More
(Source: USA Today - Mar 5)

TINY SKYCUBE AND ARDUSAT-2 SATELLITES VENTURE INTO ORBIT - The International Space Station has been busy this month releasing the largest-ever group of CubeSats – tiny shoebox-sized satellites that can take images of Earth, log environmental data and even tweet messages. Late last night, crew members aboard the ISS released five more CubeSats operated by two San Francisco companies, a Peruvian university and the the country of Lithuania. They join Planet Labs' flock of 28 satellites that were already released this month.   More
(Source: GigaOM - Mar 4)

NASA ASTRONAUTS WATCHED "GRAVITY" ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - "Gravity" was chilling enough in theaters. Just imagine watching the thriller on a doomed space expedition... in space. That is apparently what the crew aboard the International Space Station was up to ahead of the Academy Awards, where “Gravity” picked up Oscars for directing and cinematography, among others. So on Sunday night, the ISS crew — American astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata — beamed down a congratulatory message to “Gravity’s” producers.   More
(Source: Washington Post - Mar 4)

LANDMARK FOUR-TON WEATHER SATELLITE BLASTS OFF FROM JAPAN - Japan launched a $1.2 billion joint satellite mission with NASA on Thursday to measure global rain and snowfall, filling coverage gaps and anchoring an international orbital network to supply scientists and forecasters a radar-like snapshot of global precipitation every three hours. Data from the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite fleet will help predict a range of natural cataclysms, from floods and cyclones to drought and famine. The 8,500-pound satellite launched from southern Japan on Thursday is the network's centerpiece, helping officials tie together disparate measurements into a single dataset, a one-stop shop for researchers interested in global precipitation patterns.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Feb 28)

SNOW-MEASURING SATELLITE READIED FOR LAUNCH - Researchers who study inputs to the Earth’s water cycle are eagerly awaiting the launch this week of a satellite that should provide the most detailed global measurements yet of rain and snow. The data collected by the US$933-million Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory (GPM) could improve severe weather forecasts, estimates of freshwater supplies and projections of future climate change.   More
(Source: Nature.com - Feb 26)

EUROPE'S FIRST SENTINEL SATELLITE SHIPPED TO KOUROU - The first satellite in the European Union's long-awaited Copernicus Earth observation program arrived in French Guiana on Monday to prepare for liftoff on top of a Soyuz rocket in early April. Packed inside a shipping container aboard an Antonov An-124 transport plane, the Sentinel 1A environmental satellite rode across the Atlantic Ocean from Turin, Italy.    More
(Source: SapceFlight Now - Feb 26)

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