SEARCHERS RELYING ON SATELLITE DATA TO LOCATE MISSING MALAYSIA AIRLINES PLANE - Finding a missing Malaysia Airlines plane may hinge on whether searchers can narrow down where they need to look using satellite data that is inexact and has never been used for that purpose before, search and rescue experts say. Authorities now believe someone on board the Boeing 777 shut down part of the aircraft's messaging system about the same time the plane with 239 people on board disappeared from civilian radar. But an Inmarsat satellite was able to automatically connect with a portion of the messaging system that remained in operation, similar to a phone call that just rings because no one is on the other end to pick it up and provide information. More (Source: Fox News - Mar 18)
SPACE STATION MOVES AWAY FROM SPACE JUNK - The International Space Station had to sidestep a piece of space junk. Experts aren’t sure how big the junk is. It’s from a Russian weather satellite launched in 1979. After the maneuver, it was determined the debris would have posed no threat. NASA says it preferred playing it safe. More (Source: Washington Post - Mar 17)
RUSSIAN PROTON ROCKET LAUNCHES CARRYING TWO TELECOMS SATS - A Russian Proton-M rocket took off early Sunday morning from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur space center carrying two Russian telecommunications satellites, the Russian space agency said. The rocket’s payload, the Express-AT1 and Express-AT2 satellites, were successfully inserted into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nine hours after the launch by the Proton’s upper stage, the Briz-M. More (Source: RIA Novosti - Mar 16)
SATELLITE DATA REVEAL ROUTE OF MISSING MALAYSIA AIRLINES PLANE - Malaysia Airlines missing jet transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites over the course of five hours after it disappeared from radar, people briefed on the matter said, as searchers zeroed in on new target areas hundreds of miles west of the plane's original course. The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. More (Source: Wall Street Journal - Mar 16)
DRAGON CONTAMINATION CLEANUP FORCES LAUNCH DELAY - Launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying an unmanned cargo ship bound for the International Space Station has been delayed from Sunday to no earlier than March 30, because of what sources described as apparent contamination that could pose problems for research hardware carried by the Dragon cargo craft. SpaceX engineers were preparing the rocket for launch at 4:41 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) Sunday to boost the Dragon capsule, loaded with about 4,600 pounds of equipment and supplies, on an automated flight to the International Space Station. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 14)
SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW POSSIBLE MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 WRECKAGE AS FINAL WORDS OF FLIGHT REVEAL - Chinese satellites have reportedly captured images of what may be wreckage taken near where the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 dropped off the radar. The "suspected crash area at sea," according to a Chinese government agency, is roughly 140 miles from where the missing flight's transponder turned off, CNN reported. In addition to the one large object pictured, "three suspected floating objects" were also found, according to China's State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. More (Source: New York Daily News - Mar 13)
US SATELLITE IMAGING FIRM HELPS TO CROWDSOURCE SEARCH FOR MH370 - With Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 still missing as search and rescue operations enter their fourth day, an American satellite imaging company has started an initiative to crowdsource the search for the jet. In this initiative, the public will help analyse high-resolution images for any sign of the missing plane. ABC News reported that DigitalGlobe, based in Longmont, Colorado, has trained cameras from its five orbiting satellites on Saturday on the Gulf of Thailand region from where MH370 was last heard. More (Source: The Malaysian Insider - Mar 12)
SPACE STATION CREW RETURNS TO EARTH, LANDS SAFELY IN KAZAKHSTAN - Three crew members from the International Space Station returned to Earth Monday after 166 days in space, during which they made 2,656 orbits around the planet and traveled almost 70.5 million miles Expedition 38 crew members Michael Hopkins of NASA, and Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at about 11:24 p.m. EDT (9:24 a.m., March 11, in Dzhezkazgan). During Expedition 38, the crew members participated in a variety of research, including protein crystal growth studies and biological studies of plant seedling growth to technology demonstrations that are helping to improve our understanding of how liquid moves in microgravity. More (Source: Phys.org - Mar 12)
WEATHER DELAYS RETURN FROM SPACE OF RUSSIAN TORCHBEARERS, U.S. ASTRONAUT - An American astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space will have to stay in orbit one day longer than planned because of bad weather on the steppes of Kazakhstan, officials said on Monday. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky had been scheduled to leave the International Space Station (ISS) along with NASA's Mike Hopkins early on Tuesday and touch down in Kazakhstan at 0924 local time (2324 EDT Monday). Instead, their Soyuz TMA-10M craft is now expected to depart about a day later and land on Wednesday at about 1015 (0015 EDT), Russian news agencies cited officials at the Gagarin cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow as saying. More (Source: Reuters - Mar 11)
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