Author: ChrisDMarshall
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T-14 days and counting to New Horizons Pluto Flyby
A journey that started 3451 days ago aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V is rapidly closing in on its primary destination Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first to visit the Pluto system and will bring the distant planet and its five moons to life. In 14 days it will reach its…
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Now comes SpaceX’s true test
This morning SpaceX suffered the first failure of their Falcon 9 rocket as it explode two minutes into the CRS-7 mission. Initial data from Elon Musk indicates that an over-pressure event happened on the second stage. There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause. — Elon Musk…
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SpaceX loses CRS-7 mission to ISS
This morning SpaceX launched their latest mission to the International Space Station, unfortunately during the first stage flight the rocket exploded causing lost of Falcon, Dragon and the cargo it was carrying Among the cargo that Dragon was carrying was the first of two International Docking Adapters for the station which will be used…
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NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Gutted by Congress
The President’s 2016 request for $1.2b towards the continued development of the Commercial Crew program by Boeing and SpaceX has been reduced to $900 million by Congress. At present there is only one way to get crew to the International Space Station aboard Russia’s Soyuz rocket. To allow its astronauts to fly to the station…
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LightSail Update – Solar Sails deployed successfully
The Planetary Society’s LightSail cubesat reach another amazing milestone this weekend as it became the first privately funded spacecraft to deploy a Solar Sail in orbit. The spacecraft which was launched two weeks ago had been silent for eight days due to a computer glitch, suddenly on Saturday 30th May it started communicating again after a reboot…
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The Re-usable Rocket Era approaches
While SpaceX have yet to successfully land a Falcon 9 first stage it appears their vision has spurred the industry to react with both United Launch Alliance (ULA) and now Airbus Aerospace announcing plans to include re-usable components in future rocket designs. The three companies have quite different plans to achieve the re-use. SpaceX – Plan…
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LightSail deployment planned for Wednesday
Following the successful resumption of communications with the LightSail spacecraft the mission team are planning to deploy the Solar Sails on Wednesday this week. They were looking to deploy on Tuesday but to ensure everything is working as needed they added an extra day to the plan. The LightSail team will use tomorrow for a…
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LightSail is back
Following a week of silence caused by a software fault on the LightSail spacecraft it started communicating with Earth earlier today. LIGHTSAIL CONTACT! Cal Poly received two beacon packets today during a pass at 5:21 EDT (21:21 UTC). Initial analysis shows reboot occurred. — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) May 30, 2015 As the tweet above shows…
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NASA awards first Commercial Crew Flight Contract
This week NASA announced that it had awarded Boeing the first Commercial Crew flight contract under the CCtCap program. However it is important to realize that while the contract has been awarded, as NASA started in the press release. Determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at…
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Is ULA’s new rocket doomed?
With great fanfare United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced their new Vulcan Rocket last month. However since then the news has not been quite so rosy for the company. Almost immediately after the announcement Paul Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace informed ULA that the name was trademarked, at present we have not heard anything further on this but…