SOYUZ ROCKET LAUNCHES NEW US-RUSSIAN CREW TOWARD SPACE STATION - A Russian Soyuz rocket launched an international trio of crewmembers to the International Space Station today (March 25), sending them into space for a 5.5-month stint on the orbiting laboratory. The rocket launched a Soyuz capsule housing NASA's Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev at 5:17 p.m. EDT (2117 March 26 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, where the local time was 3:17 a.m. Wednesday. The three crewmembers are scheduled to dock with the space station at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 March 26 GMT), and you can watch the Soyuz's arrival live on Space.com via NASA TV starting at 10:30 p.m. EDT (0230 March 26 GMT). More (Source: Space.com - Mar 26)
US-RUSSIA QUARREL WON'T DELAY TUESDAY SPACE STATION LAUNCH - The tense political relationship between the United States and Russia will not affect the planned launch of a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts to the International Space Station Tuesday (March 25), NASA officials reiterated last week. The situation in the Ukraine has led to heightened tensions between Russia and the United States recently. Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, a region of the Ukraine, making the peninsula a part of Russia on Friday (March 21). More (Source: Space.com - Mar 25)
ROCKET SOYUZ WITH PILOTED SPACESHIP PUT ON BAIKONUR LAUNCHING PAD - Russian rocket Soyuz with a piloted spaceship was put on a launching pad at spaceport Baikonur on Sunday morning. “Delivery and putting of rocket Soyuz-FG with docked piloted spaceship Soyuz TMA-07M passed as scheduled,” an official of Russian space agency Roscosmos said at the southern Russian spaceport. “The gates of an operations and checkout facility opened at 7am local time (1am GMT) on Sunday according to years-long tradition,” the space official said. More (Source: ITAR-TASS - Mar 24)
ATLAS V ROCKET 'GO' FOR LAUNCH TUESDAY - An Atlas V rocket is set to launch Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. The rocket is carrying a top-secret payload dubbed NROL-67 into orbit. The National Reconnaissance Office builds and operates intelligence satellites for the U.S. government. More (Source: News 13 Orlando - Mar 24)
ARIANE 5 LAUNCHES ON DUAL-PAYLOAD COMMERCIAL MISSION - Kicking off a busy sequence of launches from the Europe's spaceport in the jungle of French Guiana, an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off Saturday and put two satellites in perfect orbits to expand direct-to-home television programming in Eastern Europe and broadcast football matches at this summer's World Cup in Brazil. The heavy-lift launcher, weighing 1.7 million pounds with full fuel tanks, fired its hydrogen-fed main engine and solid rocket boosters at 2204 GMT (6:04 p.m. EDT) to climb away from the ELA-3 launch pad at the Guiana Space Center near Kourou, French Guiana. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 24)
FRESH GLONASS NAVIGATION SATELLITE LAUNCHED BY RUSSIA - Russia launched a Soyuz rocket Sunday with a fresh satellite for the country's Glonass navigation system, which broadcasts positioning and timing signals to Russian military forces and civilian users worldwide. The Soyuz 2-1b rocket lifted off at 2254 GMT (6:54 p.m. EDT) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military-run facility in the Arkhangelsk region about 500 miles north of Moscow. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 24)
CHINESE SATELLITE SPOTS OBJECT IN SEARCH AREA FOR MISSING JETLINER - A Chinese satellite has spotted an object in the southern Indian Ocean in an area that is the focus of a multinational effort to find the Malaysia Airlines airliner that disappeared on March 8, the Chinese authorities said Saturday. The object is about is about 74 feet by 43 feet (22.5 meters by 13 meters), China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said on its website. It was spotted on Tuesday about 75 miles, or 120 kilometers, to the south and west of objects seen two days earlier by a commercial satellite. More (Source: New York Time - Mar 23)
OBJECTS SPOTTED BY SATELLITE ARE 'BEST LEAD' IN MALAYSIA AIRLINES SEARCH - Search crews were scouring the southern Indian Ocean today after two objects that may be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight were spotted by satellite, officials said today. Officials described the sighting as the "best lead we have right now" and said four aircraft and an Australian Navy ship were sent to the region off the coast of Australia. In addition, a Norwegian car carrier, the Hoegh St. Petersburg, was diverted into the search area which is searching through the night using lights and binocular. More (Source: ABC News - Mar 21)
ASTRA 5B SATELLITE LAUNCH SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 21 - SES S.A. announced today that Arianespace has scheduled the launch of its new satellite ASTRA 5B for March 21, 2014. The satellite will be launched into space from the European Space Centre in French Guiana on board an Ariane 5 ECA rocket between 19:05 pm and 20:02 pm local time (23.05 -- 00.02 CET; 18.05 -- 19.02 EDT). ASTRA 5B was built by Airbus Defence and Space (formerly Astrium) in Toulouse, France, using a Eurostar E3000 platform. The multi-mission satellite will be located at 31.5 degrees East and carry Ku and Ka-band payloads for the delivery of high-performance Direct-to-Home (DTH) in Eastern Europe and the neighboring markets. More (Source: Wall Street Journal - Mar 20)
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