Weekly Links
I’m back from my own personal August recess and catching up on almost a month of space news. Here’s your headline dump for August 14 to September 9! A lot has happened
Down to Earth
The Trump Administration has named Oklahoma Congressman Jim Bridenstine as their nominee for NASA administrator.
The Chinese and European astronauts conducted a joint survival training exercise off the coast of China.
Sierra Nevada Corporation conducted a “captive carry” flight of their Dream Chaser spaceplane.
Last week an ESA Ariane 5 rocket had a pad abort. The agency is still investigating.
In Orbit
The Dragon capsule launched two days earlier docked with the ISS on August 16th.
The day after the cargo. arrival, cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy conducted a successful spacewalk to do space station maintenance as well as some small satellites deployments.
Then on September 3rd a Soyuz returned to Earth, safely carrying Jack Fischer, Peggy Whitson, and Fyodor Yurchikhin to the steppes of Kazakhstan. Both Yurchikhin and Whitson now have accumulated over 600 days in space.
.@AstroPeggy , Fyodor and @Astro2fish right before leaving last night… say ciao to #Earth for us! #Expedition52 #VITAmission pic.twitter.com/c2yPKBJuEl
— Paolo Nespoli (@astro_paolo) September 3, 2017
Meanwhile on the ground, a dedicated team of flight controllers was riding out Hurricane Harvey in Houston’s Mission Control Center to ensure the successful undocking and return of the crew.
Speaking of hurricanes, the ISS crew has taken some incredible imagery of Irma has it makes its way across the Caribbean and now Florida.
Tonight, far too many people in #Irma’s path and in its wake. pic.twitter.com/bWQMxae9GV
— Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade) September 8, 2017
Lots of launches while I was out. Here’s a worldwide rundown:
- August 16 – Russian Proton rocket launched carrying a communication satellite.
- August 18 – ULA Atlas V rocket launched from Florida carrying a NASA tracking and data relay satellite.
- August 19 – Japanese H-II rocket launched carrying a communications satellite.
- August 24 – SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg carrying a payload for the government of Taiwan.
- August 26 – Orbital Minotaur rocket launched from Florida carrying a payload for the U.S. Air Force.
- August 31 – India attempted to launch a rocket carrying a navigation satellite, but the payload never made it to orbit.
- September 7 – SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida carrying the fifth X-37B flight for the U.S. Air Force.
Around the Solar System
Congratulations to the engineers and scientists on the New Horizons project; the International Astronomical Union has selected many of their original choices for features on Pluto as official names!
Good news for Mars enthusiasts: there is new talk at NASA of planning a robotic Mars sample return mission for the middle of the 2020s.