RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS PREPARE FOR SPACEWALK - Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin will perform a planned six-hour spacewalk on Monday afternoon, a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said. The two ISS flight engineers will open the hatch to the International Space Station’s (ISS) Pirs docking compartment and float outside at 17:40 Moscow time [1:40 p.m. GMT] on Monday. The spacewalk will be broadcast live by NASA.    More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Jun 24)

CHINA'S SPACE STATION SNAPPED RACING ACROSS SUN - From his vantage point from Southern France, ace astrophotographer Thierry Legault trained his Takahashi TOA-150 refracting telescope at the sun and, at precisely the right moment, captured the Chinese Tiangong-1 prototype space station (plus docked Shenzhou-10 module) as it transited the solar disk on June 16.   More
(Source: Discovery News - Jun 23)

SPACEX TO LAUNCH TURKMENISTAN'S FIRST SATELLITE - SpaceX announced today that it will be launching Turkmenistan’s first satellite, having been awarded a contract from Thales Alenia Space. The satellite is for the country’s state run communications system. Thales Alenia Space was awarded the contract to build the satellite in November 2011. The satellite is built on the company’s Spacebus 4000 platform, which has an expected lifespan of 15 years.    More
(Source: Forbes - Jun 23)

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION LOOKS MORE LIKE STAR TREK'S USS ENTERPRISE IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHER'S INCRED - While testing his new telescope a Romanian astrophotographer managed to capture clear images of the International Space Station passing in front of the moon, in broad daylight. And the snap makes Nasa's space station look remarkably like the iconic USS Enterprise from TV show Star Trek. Maximilian Teodorescu was testing the range of his new 150mm f/12 Maksutov telescope near the town of Dumitrana in Romania earlier this month when he took the shot.    More
(Source: Daily Mail - Jun 21)

SOPHISTICATED SATELLITE IS ON ITS WAY TO LAUNCH PAD - The most sophisticated commercial communications satellite ever built is making its final journey before launch. The Alphasat was designed and constructed by engineers at Astrium, with its intelligent payload core built at the firm’s facility in Anchorage Park, Hilsea. It has been built for the European Space Agency and Inmarsat, a provider of global mobile ?satellite communications services.    More
(Source: Portsmouth News - Jun 19)

INDIA'S EXCLUSIVE MET SATELLITE INSAT-3D TO BE LAUNCHED IN JULY - European space consortium Arianespace would launch India's INSAT-3D, an exclusive meteorological satellite, from its spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana on July 26. According to Indian space agency ISRO(Indian Space Research Organisation), INSAT-3D is configured with advanced meteorological payloads - a six Channel Imager, 19 Channel Sounder along with data relay transponder and satellite aided search & rescue payloads.   More
(Source: India Today - Jun 17)

ATV-4 DOCKS TO ISS FOLLOWING TEN-DAY FREE-FLIGHT - Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4) Albert Einstein spacecraft has successfully docked to the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday at 2:07 PM GMT, following a ten-day period of free-flight. ATV-4 docking follows the undocking of Progress M-19M, which was under suspicion of potentially damaging the ISS due to a faulty antenna. ATV-4 docked to the ISS at the Russian Segment (RS), via the Service Module (SM) Zvezda Aft docking port, that until a few days ago was occupied by the Progress M-19M vehicle.    More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Jun 15)

SHENZHOU 10 DOCKS WITH TIANGONG 1 - China's manned spacecraft Shenzhou 10 has successfully docked with the Tiangong-1, a target orbiter and space module, at 1:18 p.m. today. China successfully launched its fifth manned spacecraft at 5:38 p.m. on Tuesday. Three astronauts --- commander Nie Haisheng, astronaut Zhang Xiaoguang and the second Chinese woman in space Wang Yaping --- are aboard the spacecraft. They gave Dragon Boat Festival greetings to all Chinese on Wednesday.   More
(Source: China.org.cn - Jun 13)

SPACE STATION TREADMILL TO BECOME SPACE JUNK - The treadmill that kept many an astronaut fit, and no doubt sane, for 12 years will depart the International Space Station on July 26, according to collectSpace, a website that tracks the history and artifacts of space travel. After the treadmill, known by the tongue-twisting name, Treadmill Vibration Isolation System, leaves the station aboard a Russian resupply vehicle, it will come to a blazing end as the aircraft and its cargo burn into the Earth’s atmosphere.    More
(Source: Runner's World Newswire - Jun 13)

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