U.S.-RUSSIAN SPACE CREW LANDS SAFELY IN KAZAKHSTAN - A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe on Monday, delivering a trio of astronauts from a four-month stint on the International Space Station. The capsule, carrying U.S. astronaut Joseph Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, parachuted through a cloudless sky and touched down in a cloud of dust at 8:53 local time (0253 GMT). More (Source: Reuters - Sep 17)
JAPANESE RESUPPLY SHIP ENDS MISSION WITH FIERY RE-ENTRY - Japanese engineers remotely guided a space station cargo craft back into the atmosphere Friday, destroying the garbage-filled spaceship as planned after a nearly two-month mission. The HTV resupply freighter fell back into Earth's atmosphere at about 0527 GMT (1:27 a.m. EDT). The spacecraft was expected to break apart and burn up from the heat of re-entry, and any leftover debris fell into a predetermined zone in the southern Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Chile. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 16)
ASTRONAUT SET FOR RE-ENTRY TO LIFE ON EARTH - U.S. astronaut Joe Acaba will return to Earth on Sunday after four months in weightlessness while flight medical officers launch a six-week effort to help him readjust to living in normal gravity. Acaba is scheduled to depart the International Space Station at 7:11 p.m. EDT Sunday. Strapped into a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Acaba and two cosmonaut colleagues are supposed to start a supersonic atmospheric re-entry at 9:57 p.m. More (Source: USA Today - Sep 16)
ORBIT OF SPACE STATION IS ADJUSTED - Europe's ATV-3 unmanned resupply spacecraft has raised the International Space Station's orbit to 263 miles, a mission control spokesman said. The spacecraft's engines were fired at 10:15 p.m. EDT Thursday for a burn lasting almost nine minutes, raising the ISS orbit by about 1.2 miles, RIA Novosti reported. More (Source: UPI - Sep 15)
RUSSIAN ROCKET TO LOFT EUROPEAN SATELLITE - A Russian rocket with a European weather satellite is on its launch pad at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan and being readied for launch, officials said. The rocket is a Soyuz-2.1a, a three-stage rocket for lifting payloads into low Earth orbit, RIA Novosti reported. "The rocket with Fregat booster and MetOp-B satellite has been set on the launch pad 31," Russia's space agency Roscosmos said on its website. More (Source: UPI - Sep 15)
TOP-SECRET SATELLITE IS LAUNCHED FROM VANDENBERG - Barely visible in the dense fog at Vandenberg Air Force Base, a 19-story rocket roared to life and boosted a top-secret satellite into orbit. Little is known about the spacecraft except that it belongs to the National Reconnaissance Office. The secretive federal agency is in charge of designing, building, launching and maintaining the nation's spy satellites. More (Source: Los Angeles Times - Sep 15)
SES SIGNS THREE SATELLITE LAUNCHES WITH SPACEX - Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES said on Wednesday it had signed up to launch three more satellites with the privately-owned SpaceX company. The amount of the contract with the company that aims to cut the price of satellite launches was not disclosed. More (Source: Space Daily - Sep 15)
NASA LAUNCHES PROGRAM TO CERTIFY SPACE TAXIS - With an eye toward breaking Russia’s monopoly on flying crew to the international space station (ISS)?by 2017, NASA has launched a two-stage certification process aimed at ensuring commercial passenger spaceships currently under development will meet the agency’s safety standards, schedule and mission requirements. More (Source: Space News - Sep 15)
CHANDRAYAAN II MAY BE DELAYED, SAYS ISRO CHIEF - India's quest for the moon, by the name of "Chandrayaan II," planned for 2013-14, may be delayed. Indicating this at a news conference organised after the successful launch of "PSLV-C21", the 100th mission of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan said that while ISRO was keen on making the second "moon mission" a reality as scheduled, its Russian partner had other ideas. More (Source: Space Daily - Sep 13)
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