Outer-Space.org

Author: ChrisDMarshall

  • Liftoff of Falcon 9 with Dragon

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    This morning SpaceX successfully launched their latest Falcon 9 witth Dragon towards the international space station.  Following an aborted launch on Saturday that was traced back to a faulty value on engine 5 SpaceX successfully fixed, validated and prepared for launch this morning. After the 9 minute ride to orbit which was performed flawlessly by…

  • 3 Weeks and Counting to SpaceX Launch

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    In just over three weeks SpaceX is scheduled to launch their second and hopefully last COTS demo mission.  Today we are going to take a look in detail at the Dragon spacecraft and what a successful mission will mean for SpaceX and the US space industry in general. Dragon Designed and built by SpaceX the…

  • More Delays

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    Last year Russia suffered from the lose of a Progress vehicle that resulted in several delays to manned launches and the possibility of having to de-man the Space Station which has been constantly occupied since November 2000. Thankfully they were able to resolve the problems and the station returned to a full crew before the…

  • Latest News from ISS

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    Today Mike Suffredini, the Manager of the International Space Station made several announcements today during a teleconference aired live on NASA’s web site.  Here is a summary of them. Computer Hardware/Software Upgrade Mike confirmed today that they had just completed a comprehensive upgrade of the Computer Software and Hardware used to control the space station…

  • Pale Blue Dot

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    This week during the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society a number of announcements were made about recent discoveries, today we will take a looks at some of these. One of the most significant is the announcement that almost every star in the galaxy has at least one planet orbiting it. Recently we discussed…

  • Active NASA missions

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    As we close out another year we are going to take a look at some of the other NASA missions that are active in the Solar System exploring other planets.  While the future looks a little uncertain at the moment due to the growing budget crisis there are plenty of spacecraft still in operation. Voyager…

  • And then there were six

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    This morning Oleg Kononenko, Andre Kuipers and Don Pettit successfully launched from Kazakhstan aboard their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft heading to the space station to complete the full Expedition 30 crew and once again return the station to a six man crew. Despite the bitter cold weather, the crew launched on time and will now spend two days…

  • NASA Discovers First Earth-size Planets

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    Two weeks ago NASA announced the first planet is the habitable zone of another star.  Yesterday they announced the discovery of the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone but they are the smallest exoplanets…

  • Stratolaunch Systems

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    Today we return to our commercial space series as we look at a new player to the field. Paul G. Allen and Burt Rutan announced yesterday that they were once again partnering to revolutionize the space launch industry.  Their last adventure led to the Ansari X Prize winning SpaceShipOne craft which achieved three sub-orbital flights…

  • Kepler – A Search for Habitable Planets

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    ChrisDMarshall
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    This week the Kepler mission confirmed its First Planet in Habitable Zone of a Sun-like Star, they increased the number of planet candidates to 2365, they celebrated 1000 days in space and finally held their first science conference.  Today we take a look at the Kepler mission and what it has discovered so far. The…