WORLD'S 1ST SMARTPHONE SATELLITE DIALS EARTH FROM SPACE - A tiny satellite powered by a Google Nexus One smartphone has become the world's first "phonesat" to orbit Earth, its builders say. The United Kingdom Space Agency's miniature STRaND-1 satellite launched into space on Monday (Feb. 25) is one of seven spacecraft riding into orbit aboard an Indian rocket. It will test several new space technologies, including its WARP DRiVE — a novel space propulsion technology that will test a water-alcohol based thruster system. More (Source: Space.com - Mar 2)
NASA TO LAUNCH UNM SATELLITE INTO SPACE - NASA is preparing to launch a University of New Mexico student-built satellite. The Albuquerque Journal reports that NASA will launch in August a 4-inch cube called Trailblazer. Officials say the satellite will gather radiation levels from space that will be analyzed by mechanical and electrical engineering students. Craig Kief, deputy director of Configurable Space Microsystems Innovations & Applications Center, says around 25 students helped design and build the satellite over the last two years. More (Source: Foster's Daily Democrat - Mar 2)
SPACEX ROCKET BLASTS OFF ON RESUPPLY MISSION TO SPACE STATION - Blast off! SpaceX's Falcon rocket launched Friday at 10:10 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral on a resupply run to the International Space Station. The unmanned rocket is owned by the SpaceX company, and carried the company's Dragon capsule filled with more than a ton of space station supplies and experiments -- rather than the chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream carried aboard a previous mission. This time, Dragon's freezers are going up filled with mouse stem cells, protein crystals and other research items. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said snacks straight from the orchard of an employee's father are on board -- and not just apples. More (Source: Fox News - Mar 1)
VIETNAM TO LAUNCH THIRD SATELLITE INTO ORBIT - Vietnam will launch its third satellite into orbit in the second quarter of 2013, according to a document approved by the Vietnamese Government Office. Vietnamese media VnExpress quoted Bui Trong Tuyen, vice president of Vietnam's Space Technology Institute, as saying that the VNREDSat-1A, an earth observation optical satellite, is designed for the service of earth observation, analysis of natural resources, environmental management and natural disasters monitoring. More (Source: Space Daily - Feb 28)
SPACEX SET TO LAUNCH SUPPLY ROCKET TO SPACE STATION FRIDAY - Rocket maker SpaceX is targeting Friday as the launch date for the next NASA cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station. The Hawthorne, Calif., company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., performed a successful resupply mission to the space station in October and a demonstration mission in May. SpaceX is the only commercial company to perform such a task. Its Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for blastoff Friday morning from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. More (Source: RYOT - Feb 28)
INDIAN ROCKET CARRYING SEVEN SATELLITES BLASTS OFF - An Indian rocket carrying seven satellites - the Indo-French satellite SARAL, world's first smart phone-operated nano satellite, a space telescope satellite and four other foreign satellites - Monday blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here, around 80 km north of Chennai. A little after 6 p.m., the rocket - Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C20 (PSLV-C20) - standing 44.4 metres tall and weighing around 230 tonnes hurtled towards the skies ferrying seven satellites to sling into orbit. President Pranab Mukherjee and scientists at Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) rocket mission control room intently watched the rocket's progress towards the heavens, escaping the earth's gravitational pull with a one way ticket. More (Source: The Daily News - Feb 25)
COUNTDOWN BEGINS FOR INDO-FRENCH SATELLITE LAUNCH - A countdown began Saturday for next week's launch of an Indian rocket that will carry seven satellites into orbit, including an Indo-French venture for studying the world's oceans, India's space agency said. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle will blast off from the Sriharikota rocket launch centre on Monday, the Press Trust of India quoted an official of the Indian Space Research Organisation as saying. The Indo-French satellite is called "SARAL", short for Satellite with ARGOS and ALTIKA -- two climate tools developed for analysing ocean currents and sea surface heights by French space agency CNES. More (Source: GlobalPost - Feb 25)
NASA REPORT EXPLAINS SATELLITE LAUNCH FAILURE - NASA this week released an eight-page report detailing all its engineers have learned about a failed satellite launch that took place on March 4, 2011. The launch of a Taurus XL T9 rocket, designed by Orbital Science Corporation, was meant to carry the Glory climate change monitoring satellite into orbit. The rocket instead failed to reach orbit, costing the agency around $388 million. A “mishap investigation board” put together by NASA in the aftermath of the failure determined that the rocket’s fairing system failed to open fully, causing the destruction of the rocket and its payload. More (Source: WebProNews - Feb 24)
SUITCASE-SIZE SATELLITE TO PATROL FOR DANGEROUS ASTEROIDS - Earth received a wake-up call last week with a double shot of incoming space rocks—the near miss of asteroid DA14 and the Russian meteor explosion. Our planet is in a cosmic shooting gallery and more work needs to be done to survey menacing asteroids, astronomers say. Now the Canadian Space Agency is stepping up to the plate to help do just that with the launch of a new sentinel to detect and track near-Earth objects (NEOs). The pint-size space telescope is hitching a ride into orbit aboard an Indian rocket on February 25. Even though the Near-Earth Object Space Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) might find it challenging to hunt down relatively smaller size meteors... More (Source: National Geographic - Feb 22)
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