CHINA LAUNCHES 8TH NAVIGATION SATELLITE - China has successfully launched its eighth navigation satellite into orbit as part of a project to develop its own global satellite navigation system, official news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday. A Long March-3A carrier rocket carrying the Beidou or Compass navigation satellite took off at 4.47 a.m. Sunday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, the agency said.    More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Apr 10)

NASA: SOYUZ TMA-21 DOCKS WITH ISS - On Thursday, at 07:09 EDT, the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft docked with the ISS, International Space Station. The Expedition 27 members, flight engineers Andrey Borisenko and Ronald Garan and mission commander Alexander Samokutyaev, reached their colleagues Paolo Nespoli, Catherine Coleman and Dmitri Kondratiev, on the orbiting station since December 17.    More
(Source: Avionews - Apr 7)

YURI GAGARIN/SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA SPECIAL EVENT - To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the First Man in Space (Russian pilot Yuri Gagarin who in April 12, 1961, was the first human being to go into space on an 108 minute flight), and the first flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia (Sunday morning on April 12th, 1981, known as mission STS-1, opening what is called the Shuttle era), look for special event station, N4S, to be on the air in remembrance of these two events: One which changed the course of history, and the other helped expand our knowledge of the space sciences and in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS).    More
(Source: Southgate Amateur Radio Club - Apr 7)

NEXT SPACE STATION CREW SOARS INTO ORBIT ATOP SOYUZ - A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two rookie cosmonauts and a NASA shuttle veteran blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Monday evening (U.S. time), streaking into orbit and setting off after the International Space Station. Mounted on the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin to become the first human in space 50 years ago April 12, the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft roared to life at 6:18:20 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), the moment Earth's rotation carried the pad into the plane of the space station's orbit (4:18:20 a.m. April 5 local time). Belching brilliant jets of flame from its liquid-fueled strap-on boosters, the Soyuz rocket climbed away through a clear pre-dawn sky, putting on a spectacular show for Russian and U.S. space managers, family members, engineers and a throng of well wishers    More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Apr 6)

GOCE GRAVITY SATELLITE HAS PLENTY OF FUEL TO KEEP FLYING - Europe's GOCE satellite is collecting exquisite data on Earth's uneven gravity field and has enough xenon fuel to maintain its low-altitude orbit for continued operations through 2013, according to the mission's project manager. The European Space Agency released last week a sneak peek of Earth's gravity field in a lumpy spherical representation called a geoid, a three-dimensional map of the planet's surface and oceans if tides and currents did not exist.    More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Apr 5)

STATION FIRES ENGINES TO AVOID ORBITAL DEBRIS - At 10:36 p.m. EDT, ground controllers moved the International Space Station away from a piece of orbital debris. The object is a relic from a collision between the COSMOS 2251 and Iridium 33 satellites in February 2009 and had been close to the station's orbit prior to the debris avoidance maneuver (DAM). The DAM, performed during the Expedition 27 crew sleep period, used thrusters from three spacecraft, the European Space Agency's Johannes Kepler Automated Transfer Vehicle 2 (ATV2), the Zvezda service module and Progress 41P.    More
(Source: Space-travel.com - Apr 4)

NASA DELAYS LAUNCH OF SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR BY 10 DAYS TO AVOID SPACE TRAFFIC JAM - NASA has delayed the last launch of the shuttle Endeavour toward the International Space Station by at least 10 days, to April 29, in order to avoid a space traffic jam with an unmanned Russian cargo ship, also headed for the orbiting laboratory later this month. Endeavour is now targeted to blast off on its STS-134 flight on Friday, April 29 at 3:47 p.m. EDT (1947 GMT), NASA officials said. The decision to postpone the launch removes a scheduling conflict with a Russian Progress cargo ship, which is currently scheduled to launch April 27. The robotic Progress vehicle will arrive at the station on April 29.    More
(Source: Space.com - Apr 4)

IRAN PLANS TO JOIN APSCO SATELLITE-BUILDING PROJECT - Iran intends to design and build a remote sensing satellite jointly with Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO) member states. "Iranian scientists have always taken part in APSCO meetings," the Head of Iranian Space Agency (ISA) Hamid Fazeli told ISNA adding that, "designing and building a remote-sensing satellite is one of the fields for cooperation." "We plan to gain a larger share in building the satellite," he continued, "the country's share is to be set based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but Iran is struggling to gain a larger share." The launch aimed at testing the function of programming systems and subsystems.    More
(Source: ISNA - Apr 4)

NASA SAYS ENDEAVOUR SUSTAINED MINOR STORM DAMAGE - A powerful storm including a lightning strike in the launch pad area caused minor damage to the space shuttle Endeavour, a NASA official said Thursday. Continuing bad weather has prevented further inspection of the shuttle scheduled to launch on its final mission on April 19, said Allard Beutel, a spokesman at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The storm Wednesday included a wind gust of 90 miles per hour at launch pad 39A, as well as a lightning strike "inside the pad perimeter," Beutel said.   More
(Source: CNN - Apr 1)

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