Month: April 2015

  • Blue Origin Launches New Shepard

    Blue Origin completed the first test flight of there New Shepard rocket yesterday, the New Shepard rocket uses their BE-3 engine which recently completed testing.  The rocket is design to be fully re-usable, unfortunately they were not able to recover the main stage this time due to a hydraulic issue after the crew capsule was…

  • Progress 59 (M-27M) Failure

    While the Progress 59 (M-27M) spacecraft is still in orbit, Russian Mission Control have declared that it cannot be recovered, they have tried repeatedly to send commands to the vehicle in an attempt to control the rapid spinning but as several reports have stated they have had no luck. In addition orbital tracking shows at least…

  • Will Progress failure have Impact on ISS re-supply

    With what potentially looks like a loss of mission for Progress M-27M questions will once again arise as to the impact on re-supply to the International Space Station. At present the mission hasn’t been declared lost however the longer the vehicle spins out of control the more likely it is that they will not be…

  • Progress 59 Out of Control

    Following the successful launch yesterday morning mission control has not been able to regain control of the progress M-27M vehicle which at one point was seen spinning out of control on the third pass of ground stations. Mission control have informed the station that there will be no docking attempt on Thursday which was the backup…

  • Progress 59 Launches

    Russia launched the next Progress re-supply vehicle to the International Space Station early this morning the launch and deploy to orbit was successful, however the Progress M-27M spacecraft suffered a glitch once in orbit resulting in mission control deciding to use the two day flight plan instead of the six hour which had become common practice.…

  • SpaceX launches TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSat satellite

    SpaceX has completed their 5th launch of the year with the delivery of the TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSat satellite to orbit. The launch was delayed several weeks to allow SpaceX time to investigate issues they found with Helium bottles back at the factory and to allow the CRS-6 mission to take off on time.  With this launch SpaceX…

  • Dragon Berthed to ISS

    The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft successfully arrived at the International Space Station this morning completing a two day journey which started with the picture perfect launch on Tuesday. ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti controlled the ISS robotic arm and captured of Dragon at 6:55 am EDT. Mission control then manoveured the spacecraft to the Berthing which was…

  • SpaceX Landing Attempt

    For the second time SpaceX attempted to land a Falcon 9 first stage on the Autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) named “Just Read the Instructions”. For this attempt the rocket got very close but didn’t survive the attempt, the first time the rocket tipped over just before landing causing it to fall over the side.…

  • SpaceX CRS-6 mission lifts off

    SpaceX completed it’s fourth launch of 2015 with the liftoff of the CRS-6 Dragon capsule towards the International Space Station.  SpaceX confirmed that after separation from the second stage the Dragon spacecraft successfully deployed it’s Solar Array’s and is now heading towards the International Space Station.  It is scheduled to arrive at approximately 7:00 a.m. EDT on…

  • Will ULA’s Vulcan bring down SpaceX

    Almost as soon as United Launch Alliance’s Tory Bruno announced the new Vulcan rocket system did articles start to appear stating that it “would bring down SpaceX”.   One from CNN also incorrectly stated that SpaceX aborted the landing of the first stage yesterday. While that may be the goal of ULA it is way too…