ROCKET LAUNCH DELAYED AFTER FUEL-LINE LEAK FOUND - South Korea delayed its third attempt to launch a satellite-carrying rocket on Friday after technicians discovered an apparent leak in a fuel line to the rocket’s first stage. The launch was scrubbed until at least Monday, officials initially said, because the rocket needed to be removed from the launch pad to replace a seal in the fuel connection. Even if that could be done in one day, the countdown process resets with at least two days of preparation time.    More
(Source: Wall Street Journal - Oct 27)

SOYUZ SPACECRAFT DOCKS AT SPACE STATION WITH NEW US-RUSSIAN CREW - A Russian Soyuz space capsule linked up with the International Space Station Thursday (Oct. 25) to deliver three new residents to the orbiting laboratory. The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft docked at the space station's rooftop Poisk module at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) after a two-day orbital chase. Riding on the Soyuz were American astronaut Kevin Ford of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who are beginning a five-month mission to the space station.    More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 25)

ROCKET EXPLOSION RAISES WORRIES OVER SPACE DEBRIS - A Russian Breeze M rocket stage, left with loaded fuel tanks after an August launch failure, exploded in orbit Oct. 16, raising concerns of the U.S. military, NASA and global satellite operators on the lookout for collision threats from hundreds of new space debris fragments.    More
(Source: Spaceflight.com - Oct 25)

SOUTH KOREA’S SATELLITE LAUNCH AND NORTH KOREAN SATELLITE ENVY - South Korea tries for the third time to successfully launch its own satellite into earth orbit using Russian technology this Friday, October 26, 2012. A new essay by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Clay Moltz analyzes South Korea’s space strategy in a new U.S.-Korea program essay. The essay analyzes South Korea’s program achievements and strategic challenges in the context of rapidly advancing Chinese, Indian, and Japanese programs.    More
(Source: Council on Foreign Relations - Oct 23)

THREE-MAN CREW LAUNCHES FOR INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Two rookie cosmonauts and a NASA shuttle veteran rocketed into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft Tuesday and set off after the International Space Station. Joining them were 32 medaka fish, bound for a zero-gravity research aquarium aboard the lab complex. Under a clear afternoon sky, the workhorse Russian rocket roared to life at 6:51:11 a.m. EDT (GMT-4; 4:51:11 p.m. local time) and smoothly climbed away from its launching pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.    More
(Source: Spaceflight Now - Oct 23)

MYSTERIOUS X-37B MILITARY SPACE PLANE'S NEXT SECRET MISSION DELAYED - The U.S. Air Force's launch of the next secret mission by its unmanned X-37B space plane has been officially delayed to mid-November. The upcoming X -37B space plane mystery mission, also known as Orbital Test Vehicle-3 (OTV-3), was slated to blast off atop an Atlas 5 rocket on Oct. 25 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The liftoff is now scheduled for Nov. 13, according to ULA.    More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 22)

SOYUZ CRAFT READIED FOR SPACE STATION MISSION - A Russian-made Soyuz rocket was erected into place Sunday, ahead of the start of a mission to take a three-man crew to the International Space Station. For the first time since 1984, the manned launch will take place from Baikonur cosmodrome launch pad 31, while the pad that is normally used, from which Yury Gagarin began his landmark space mission, is undergoing modernization.    More
(Source: NBCNews.com - Oct 22)

NASA... GOES-13 GOING AGAIN - The GOES-13 spacecraft, which had its sounder and imager instruments taken out of service because of technical trouble in late September, returned to full operations on Thursday, October 18, 2012. The trouble stemmed from a motor vibration, which caused a lubricant buildup that obstructed the spinning motion of the filter wheel in the sounder. A team of engineers from NOAA, Boeing and ITT suppressed the vibration, the filter wheel restarted and is running smoothly, with improved performance.    More
(Source: SatNews Publishers - Oct 20)

SPACE STATION OPENS LAUNCH PAD FOR TINY SATELLITES - Astronauts on the International Space Station have transformed their high-flying laboratory into a new kind of launch pad for tiny satellites in a bid to boost student interest and access to space. This month, the space station's Expedition 33 crew launched five tiny Cubesats, each only a few inches wide, using a small satellite orbital deployer from Japan's space agency JAXA. They were the first Cubesat satellites ever launched from the International Space Station, coming 2 1/2 years after NASA announced the CubeSat program.    More
(Source: MSNBC - Oct 18)

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