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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.

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.

Lots of launches while I was out. Here’s a worldwide rundown:

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.

Posted in astronauts, China, Earth photography, ESA, Friday Links, India, ISS, Japan, JSC, Mars, Mission Control, NASA, New Horizons, New Space, Orbital Sciences, Planetary science, Pluto, politics, Rockets, Russia, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

Rocket Lab released some information about their failed test launch last month. It turns out the issue was due to some ground segment hardware and they should be able to recover and continue with another test launch soon.

SpaceX is removing the Rotating Service Structure (RSS) at pad 39A at KSC. The RSS was needed for Space Shuttle launches from the historic pad. The RSS from 39B has already been removed in preparations for the SLS program.

The much anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may get delayed from late 2018 into 2019 due to a launch site conflict down in French Guiana, where JWST will be launched on an ESA rocket.

A Japanese rocket launch was cancelled this week due to an unspecified glitch. JAXA was trying to launch a new GPS satellite.

In Orbit

This morning, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon resupply capsule to the ISS. The launch was flawless with a successful first stage landing at Landing Zone 1. The Dragon will rendezvous with the ISS on Wednesday.

Among the cargo on the Dragon capsule is a new experimental super computer, a cosmic ray detector, and a slew of other experiments.

The 6-person Expedition 52 crew is really hitting their stride with their on-orbit photography, with daily Twitter updates to enjoy. The mission will wind down with the return of Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer in early September, followed shortly by the launch of the second half of the Expedition 53 crew.

https://twitter.com/Astro2fish/status/895770661628465152

 

Posted in Earth photography, ESA, Friday Links, ISS, JWST, NASA, Rocket Lab, Rockets, SLS, SpaceX | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

Leonardo DiCaprio is going to produce a new TV series based on The Right Stuff.

NASA’s new TDRS-M satellite had a mishap during pre-flight processing. Launch has been rescheduled while repairs are conducted.

Virgin Galactic conducted another drop test of their SpaceShipTwo vehicle at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

NASA’s fourteenth crew of the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) program started their 45-day mission yesterday.

Rocket startup Vector Space Systems conducted a test launch of their suborbital rocket on Thursday. Here’s a short video of liftoff.

In Orbit

The International Space Station crew is back up to 6 after a new Soyuz launched from Kazakhstan and docked just a few hours later. The three new ISS crew members, Sergey Ryazanskiy, Paolo Nespoli, and Randy Bresnik, are all spaceflight veterans.

There are now 5 active Twitter users on ISS, sharing their thoughts, activities, and views with us! Check out their posts at this feed.

In addition to the Soyuz launch, the only other rocket launch in the past two weeks was a European Space Agency Vega rocket. The rocket launched on August 2 from French Guiana carrying two earth observing satellites.

Around the Solar System

In case you had forgotten that there are two active NASA rovers on the surface of Mars, here are some beautiful panoramas from Opportunity, on the edge of Endeavour crater.

Results are in of the stellar occultation observation of object 2014 MU69, and astronomers think it may actually be a binary, rather that single piece of rock. 2014 MU69 is the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) that the New Horizons spacecraft will visit in 2019.

New evidence suggests there may be more water hidden beneath the surface of the moon than previously thought.

Out There

Speaking of moons, a new paper analyzing the light curve data from Kepler of a distant star shows the possibility of a large planet with a large moon in orbit. Hubble is scheduled to do follow up observations in October to confirm the finding.

Posted in astronauts, Earth photography, ESA, Extrasolar planets, Friday Links, HERA, Hubble, ISS, Moon, NASA, New Space, Planetary science, Pop Space, Rockets, Vector Space, Virgin Galactic | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

Check out this new video of Blue Origin’s orbital rocket concept, New Glenn.

If you like planetary science and are excited by the idea of future missions to Europa, you should read this detailed post at Ars Technica about how Congressman John Culbertson is working to make it happen.

SpaceX successfully conducted the static fire test for their next rocket launch from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. A Falcon 9 carrying a commercial satellite will liftoff very early Tuesday morning, March 14th.

In Orbit

Only one orbital rocket launch since my last post. A European Space Agency Vega rocket launched the Earth-observing Sentinel-2B satellite from French Guiana on March 7th.

As usual, there are lots of good pictures from the crew on the ISS to share. Here’s a selection.

https://twitter.com/Thom_astro/status/839769655971627008

https://twitter.com/Thom_astro/status/839831200780988418

Around the Solar System

New data from the Dawn probe in orbit of Ceres indicates that the “bright spots” are much younger than the craters they inhabit. This is evidence of relatively recent cryovulcanism.

Check out these incredible images of Saturn’s tiny moon Pan. It has a unique shape no one has ever seen before.

This is a pretty cool series of images showing a global dust storm moving across Mars.

Posted in Blue Origin, Cassini, Ceres, Dawn, Earth photography, ESA, Europa, Friday Links, ISS, JPL, Mars, NASA, New Space, Planetary science, politics, Rockets, Science, SpaceX | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

NASA has finalized an agreement with Boeing to use the extra seats on two Soyuz flights to the ISS over the next year and a half for additional US astronauts. There is some contractual stuff going on here, but basically NASA is going to use seats that Roscosmos was going to leave empty to save money.

Virgin Galactic has spun off its LauncherOne program into a new company called Virgin Orbit.

Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin is now getting in on the new moon missions also. According to the Washington Post (owned by Bezos), Blue Origin has floated a proposal to the new US presidential administration that they want to help support NASA missions to the moon with their Blue Moon concept.

PBS News Hour did a brief segment on all of this new interest in lunar missions:

In Orbit

Two rocket launches since my last post:

It’s hard to keep up with the current ISS crew, the members of Expedition 50, as they tweet like its all they do in what little spare time they have. Here’s a selection of the best pictures from just the last week.

 

Around the Solar System

NASA’s MAVEN probe in orbit of Mars executed an avoidance maneuver of about 0.4 m/s to avoid colliding with the moon Phobos. That velocity change is small, about on the order of the debris avoidance maneuvers we do with the ISS.

Check out these dust devils spotted by Curiosity rover on Mars.

Did you know that Saturn’s moon Enceladus is half cratered and half smooth? Check out this recent image from NASA’s Cassini probe to see for yourself.

Posted in astronauts, Blue Origin, Boeing, Cassini, China, commercial crew, Earth photography, Enceladus, Friday Links, ISS, Mars, Moon, MSL, NASA, New Space, Orion, politics, Rockets, Saturn, Space Tourism, SpaceX, ULA, Virgin Galactic | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

The crew of three Chinese taikonauts finished their 30-day stay aboard the Tiangong-2 space staion and returned to Earth last month.

A planned cargo resupply flight (with no astronauts aboard) launched from Kazakhstan on December 1 on its way to the ISS, but did not make orbit and crashed somewhere in a remote part of Asia. The next ISS resupply is a Japanese HTV vehicle launching next week.

Virgin Galactic continued their flight test program for the new SpaceShipTwo vehicle (named VSS Unity) with a captive carry flight on November 30 and then a glide drop test on December 3. Powered flights should be happening soon, but no specific dates are public. Here’s a photo gallery of the flight test.

In Orbit

Four other rockets launched since my last post on November 16, all successfully placing their payloads in orbit:

The ISS has had a very busy month, notwithstanding the loss of Progress 65. After the last three members of Expedition 50 arrived, they got quickly to work with last-minute packing of the Cygnus freighter, which they released two days later.

Since the Cygnus departure, the crew has been furiously working on their long list of on-orbit experiments. Thomas has someone found the time to tweet every day. Some of his best are below:

Around the Solar System

Radar measurements on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have discovered a vast deposit of frozen water under the Northern mid-latitudes of Mars.

Posted in China, Earth photography, ESA, ISS, Japan, Mars, NASA, New Space, Orbital Sciences, Planetary science, Rockets, Space Tourism, ULA, Virgin Galactic | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Lots to catch up on since my last post on July 23rd. The great summer for spaceflight continues.

Down to Earth

After Eileen Collins spoke at the RNC, another Space Shuttle commander, Mark Kelly, spoke at the DNC.

Sierra Nevada is getting ready to start test flights of their Dream Chaser spaceplane in California, once their full-scale vehicle is shipped their from Colorado.

Virgin Galactic was awarded an operations license from the FAA as they are preparing to resume flight tests with their new SpaceShipTwo vehicle.

A small sample bag from the Apollo 11 mission is at the center of two lawsuits. I’m sure Dr. Jones would agree that it belongs in a museum.

One of the Orbiter Access Arm’s from the Space Shuttle program is now on display at Houston’s Space Center Houston.

Meanwhile, the next generation of crew access arms, for Boeing’ Starliner capsule, was delivered to the Atlas V pad in Florida.

SpaceX conducted a full duration test fire of one of their recovered first stage boosters. Here’s the video:

Google Lunar X Prize competitor, Moon Express, has received approval from the United States government for their private mission to land a rover on the moon.

Vector Space Systems completed their first successful sub-orbital launch.

In Orbit

Speaking of launches, there were four successful orbital flights since my last post. This brings the year’s total to 50 for 50 on orbital launches. For comparison, 2015 had 87 total with 5 failures.

First was an Atlas V launch from Cape Canaveral carrying a secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Second and third were two chinese launches carrying a new communications satellite and a radar imaging satellite.

Lastly was the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch early in the morning ofAugust 14. The rocket successfully delivered the Japanese JCSAT communications satellite to orbit and recovered the first stage booster on the ASDS at sea. Very impressive. This brings SpaceX’s year up to 8 successful launches for 8 attempts – a yearly record already in August – and 5 for 8 on booster recovery.

Coming up next week is a spacewalk on ISS by NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins to install the new International Docking Adapter.

Around the Solar System

The Chinese Yutu rover is still communicating with the ground from the lunar surface, although it has long since stopped roving. Despite some reports that it is “dead” it is still expected to wake up from hibernation after the current lunar night.

Follow this link for an update on the Curiosity rover mission on Mars, including some nice pictures.

Here is a full year of observations of the Earth NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite. The cyclones in the Pacific are quite obvious.

Out There

Apparently claims of a discover of an Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri (our nearest neighboring star) are exciting, but it is worth waiting for more reputable news sources to pick it up than just a small German newspaper… or a peer-reviewed journal paper?

Posted in Boeing, China, commercial crew, Earth photography, Extrasolar planets, Friday Links, ISS, MSL, NASA, Rockets, Sierra Nevada, Space Shuttle, Space Tourism, SpaceX, ULA, Virgin Galactic | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

Ohio’s Port Columbus International Airport has been renamed for astronaut John Glenn.

Orbital ATK says it is working on a new rocket, simply called the Next-Generation Launcher, to compete with ULA and SpaceX.

In Orbit

SpaceX continues their very successful year with a commsat launch (Thaicomm-8) to geostationary orbit and another successful landing of a Falcon 9 first stage at sea. Here is a timelapse from an onboard camera showing the landing.

Three other successful rocket launches in the last week included a Soyuz launch by ESA carrying new Galileo navigation satellites, a Soyuz launch by Russia carrying a single GLONASS navigation satellite, and a Chinese rocket carrying Earth-observing satellites.

Up on the ISS, NASA successfully completed deployment of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which is the first expandable structure to be launched as part of a manned spaceflight program. Astronauts are expected to egress BEAM in the near future.

Not much else happened in space news this week (but really, that’s a lot), so here are some pretty pictures from the ISS:

Posted in astronauts, China, Earth photography, ISS, Orbital Sciences, Russia, SpaceX, ULA | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

Caltech has announced that Michael Watkins will replace Charles Elachi as director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

New legislation in the US Senate, if passed, would put fallen astronaut Christa McAuliffe on a dollar coin for the 30th anniversary of the loss of Challenger.

Don’t miss today’s (Monday, May 9) transit of the sun by Mercury. If you don’t have the skill, equipment, or location to view it yourself, you can follow online with a live feed from various sources.

The joint European-Russian Mars rover project ExoMars has been delayed from the 2018 to 2020 launch window.

NASA’s Langley Research Center has named a new building for Katherine Johnson, the mathematician who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year.

In Orbit

Early on the morning of May 6, SpaceX launched a commercial communications satellite on a Geostationary Transfer Orbit. The launch was a beautiful and nominal night launch. After Main Engine Cut Off (MECO) the Falcon 9 first stage flew back to the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) for another successful landing at sea. Are you not entertained?

Speaking of SpaceX, don’t forget to tune into NASA TV on May 11 for coverage of their Dragon spacecraft departing the International Space Station.

And as usual, the ISS crew has been busy sharing their view on high with us. Here are some stunning recent posts from their Twitter accounts:

In Orbit

Cassini did some recent observations of Enceladus by watching a the moon transit in front of a star, revealing new clues about the ice world’s geology.

Out There

The TRAPPIST observatory in Chile has discovered a solar system of three small planets about 40 light years from Earth.

Posted in astronomical event, astronomy, Cassini, Earth photography, Enceladus, ESA, ExoMars, Extrasolar planets, Friday Links, History, JPL, Mars, NASA, politics, Rockets, Russia, SpaceX | No Comments »

Weekly Links

Down to Earth

Former Space Shuttle astronaut and commander Don Williams passed away on February 23rd at 74. Read about his impressive career at CollectSpace.

Orbital ATK’s S.S. Deke Slayton departed the ISS on February 20 after a successful two-month mission.

NASA received a record number of applicants to the astronaut class of 2017.

Ron Garan, former NASA astronaut, has been named the chief pilot at World View, which aims to launch tourists to the edge of space in a balloon.

Virgin Galactic unveiled their latest spaceship, the second version of their SpaceShipTwo. They hope to start their flight test campaign soon, but no new target date for commercial flights was announced.

China has announced that they plan to launch their next space station later this year.

In Orbit

Earlier this week, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned safely from his 340 day mission aboard ISS. Before he left, he had a little fun with a costume his brother sent up to him:

You can see all the pictures that Scott took while onboard the ISS here (and there a lot!).

SpaceX finally had another successful launch, after several scrubs over the past week or two. On Friday, March 4th, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the SES-9 payload launched from Florida. It was their first launch since January and second of the year. The first stage attempted a landing on their Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) but had a hard landing.

Posted in astronauts, Astrophotography, China, Earth photography, Friday Links, History, ISS, Mission Control, NASA, New Space, Orbital Sciences, Rockets, Space Tourism, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic | No Comments »
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