ORBITAL STATION AVOIDS COLLISION WITH SPACE JUNK - The Russian Mission Control has carried out an emergency adjustment of the International Space Station's orbit to avoid its possible collision with a piece of an old Russian launch vehicle. The orbit was raised by 4.7 kilometers to approximately 387.1 km on Thursday, and the ISS is now nine kilometers above the 10-cm fragment of the Tsiklone-3 carrier rocket launched in 1991. More (Source: RIA Novosti - Sep 30)
CHINESE ROCKET SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES MINI-SPACE LAB - China launched a miniature space module into orbit Thursday, where it will join another craft for the country's first space docking in November and create a destination for up to two manned flights next year. The 19,000-pound Tiangong 1 module lifted off at 1316 GMT (9:16 a.m. EDT) aboard a Long March 2F rocket. Chinese engineers modified the 170-foot-tall rocket for the launch of Tiangong 1, which is heavier and larger than China's manned Shenzhou capsules that previously flew on the rocket seven times. More (Source: Space Flight Now - Sep 30)
QUETZSAT 1 SPACECRAFT GOES UP TO SERVE MEXICO AND U.S. - A direct-to-home television broadcasting satellite for Mexico and the U.S. was successfully hauled into orbit Thursday by Russia's commercial Proton heavy-lifting rocket launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. More (Source: Space Flight Now - Sep 30)
IS ANOTHER DISABLED SATELLITE HEADED FOR EARTH? - On the heels of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite’s (UARS) splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, Telegraph reporter Andy Bloxham warned over the weekend that a second satellite is headed for Earth and should re-enter our planet’s atmosphere sometime next month. The craft in question is the Röntgensatellit (aka the ROSAT), a 2.4-ton space telescope that was originally constructed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and was disabled after its guidance system failed in 1999. More (Source: RedOrbit - Sep 28)
MINOTAUR 4 ROCKET BLAZES FIERY TRAIL INTO SPACE - A Minotaur rocket derived from decommissioned nuclear missile parts blasted off at 1549 GMT (11:49 a.m. EDT; 7:49 a.m. Alaska time) today from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska. The launch is carrying a U.S. Navy communications satellite to aid troops deployed in battle zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. More (Source: Space Flight Now - Sep 28)
SATELLITE LIKELY FELL IN PACIFIC; 'WE MAY NEVER KNOW' - Where in the world is NASA's crashed satellite? On the ocean floor most likely, what's left of it, but nobody seems to know for sure. The best bet is that the fiery breakup of NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), designed to study atmospheric chemistry, scattered debris across a 500-mile swath of the Pacific Ocean. Coming decades after the nuclear era led to U.S. missile-warning radars being placed around the globe, the question remains: Why it wasn't possible to pinpoint the exact areas where pieces of the NASA satellite fell to Earth? More (Source: USA Today - Sep 28)
CHINA WILL LAUNCH A PROTOTYPE OF ITS SPACE STATION LATER THIS WEEK - China rallied hard to become a part of the US-led, international partnership that owns and operates the International Space Station, but was ultimately turned down. Not one to be left out, China decided to go ahead and build its own manned space station — and later this week, the country will take a major step toward seeing this project become reality. The country's Tiangong 1, or "Heavenly Palace," which we talked about in our Fall Science preview, is scheduled for liftoff on either the 29th or 30th of this month. More (Source: io9 - Sep 27)
LESSON OF A FALLING SATELLITE - Did you hear about the 6-ton NASA satellite expected to fall to on Earth on Friday? Don't panic, Chicken Little! All kinds of space debris -- both man-made and natural -- falls harmlessly to Earth each year, and like those bits and pieces, the debris of this satellite will probably fall into the oceans or onto uninhabited land. NASA puts the odds you will be hit by debris at 21 trillion to one. Still, this event is an example of the technical challenges humans continually face. More (Source: CNN - Sep 25)
SEA LAUNCH CONDUCTS FIRST SATELLITE LAUNCH SINCE BANKRUPTCY REORGANIZATION LAST YEAR - A European communications satellite was boosted into orbit Saturday by a rocket that blasted off from Sea Launch AG’s floating pad in the equatorial Pacific, marking the first mission since the company’s emergence from bankruptcy protection last year. The Zenit 3-SL rocket had no problems as it rose into space with the Atlantic Bird 7 satellite, according to a company webcast. The satellite will serve Eutelsat Communications’s broadcasting markets across the Middle East, North Africa and northwest Africa. More (Source: Washington Post - Sep 25)
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