Author: ChrisDMarshall
-
Philae Lands on 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
Today the European Space Agency and it’s partners around the world successfully landed the Philae spacecraft on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The Philae lander was launched on 2 March 2004 aboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft which has travelling billions of miles since then and has been in orbit around 67P since August this year (see previous post).…
-
AJ26 Turbo Pump most likely doomed Cygnus launch
Orbital announced today that the preliminary findings of the Accident Investigation Board (AIB) point to a Turbo pump failure in one of the two AJ26 main engines on the Antares rocket. Because of this Orbital will no longer use the AJ26 engines and will instead accelerate the migration to a new engine on the Antares. Due…
-
Orbital CRS-3 Update 11/03/2014
Over the weekend, Orbital confirmed the participation of the following individuals who will serve on the Antares launch failure Accident Investigation Board (AIB), which is being led by Orbital under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The composition of the AIB is as follows: Chairman David Steffy, Chief Engineer of Orbital’s Advanced Programs…
-
Orbital CRS-3 Update 10/31/2014
Antares Data Review It is a travel day for the remainder of Orbital’s Antares data review team who were on site at Wallops Island supporting the initial “quick look” flight data evaluation on Wednesday and Thursday. At this point we believe the on-site data review process has progressed as far as necessary, so the team…
-
Virgin Galactic suffers in-flight anomaly
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo took off today for the first powered flight in almost nine months, after a three hour delay waiting for the weather to cooperate the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane took off and 45m later dropped the SS2 vehicle. Soon after the SS2 began it’s powered flight something went wrong causing the vehicle to crash.…
-
Orbital CRS-3 Update 10/30/2014
Launch Site Status: Based on initial sweeps conducted by an Orbital safety team, it appears a significant amount of debris remains on the site and it is likely substantial hardware evidence will be available to aid in determining root cause of the Antares launch failure. Some of the Cygnus cargo has also been found and…
-
Atlas V launches successfully with GPS IIF-8 satellite
This afternoon ULA successfully launches another GPS IIF satellite aboard it’s workhorse Atlas V vehicle. This was the third launch attempt around the world within a 24 hour period following the Orbital Antares accident yesterday and the successful Soyuz launch early this morning EDT. This was the 8th GPS IIF satellite to be launched by…
-
Progress 57 arrives at the International Space Station
Fifteen hours after the lose of the Orbital Sciences Cygnus spacecraft another cargo vehicle from Russia arrived successfully at the station. Launched just six hours before, the Progress 57 completed it’s four orbit, six hour journey to the station with a successful docking at 9:08am EDT. Carrying almost three tonnes of supplies for the station,…
-
Orbital Sciences Orb-3 rocket explodes after liftoff #Orb3
Following a scrub yesterday due to a boat breaking the range safety keep out area the Orbital Sciences Orb-3 mission made another attempt today. Following a very some and uneventful countdown the Antares rocket carrying the ‘Deke Slayton’ Cygnus lifted off on time at 6:22pm EDT, unfortunately approximately 6 seconds later a catastrophic failure occurred causing…
-
ISS Spacewalk EVA-40 (184) completed successfully
The third spacewalk in as many weeks has been completed successfully by Cosmonauts Maksim Surayev and Aleksandr Samokutyayev, originally planned for approximately 6 hours the two worked way ahead of the timeline bringing the spacewalk to an end over 2 hours early. They completed the following tasks during the spacewalk – Removed and jettisoned Radiometriya…