Weekly Links
Down to Earth
NASA announced last week that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch date is slipping about a year to May 2020.
Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell celebrated their 90th birthdays.
Ars Technica got Chris Hadfield to open up on some details of his viral Space Oddity video, shot on the ISS.
The Chinese Tiangong-1 space station completed its long-anticipated uncontrolled re-entry today, somewhere over the South Pacific.
In Orbit
Last Thursday, March 29, astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold exited the ISS airlock for a full six-hour spacewalk to conduct repairs and maintenance.
There were five orbital rocket launches since my last post a week ago:
- March 29 – An ISRO (India) GSLV mark 2 rocket carrying a communications satellite.
- March 29- A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a military satellite.
- March 29 – A CNSA (China) Long March 3B rocket carrying two Beidou navigation satellites.
- March 30 – A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 10 satellites for Iridium.
- March 31 – A CNSA Long March 4C rocket carrying three Earth-observing satellites.
Tomorrow, Monday, April 2, SpaceX will be launching a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule to the ISS. Below is a video from CASIS with an overview of the science launching on the mission.
Out There
Astronomers have discovered a galaxy which has no dark matter – the first galaxy discovered of this kind.