Category: Commercial
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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CCtCap is Back On
On Oct. 9, under statutory authority available to it, NASA has decided to proceed with the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts awarded to The Boeing Company and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. notwithstanding the bid protest filed at the U.S. Government Accountability Office by Sierra Nevada Corporation. The agency recognizes that failure to provide the…
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CCtCap on HOLD
Due to the appeal by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) of the CCtCap awards to Boeing and SpaceX both companies have been told to stop any work until the appeal process has been completed. SNC filed a complaint on 26th Sept 2014 with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), while full details of the complaint are not…
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SpaceX CRS-4 Mission Launches Successfully
At 1:52:04am EDT today a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station for the fourth CRS mission under the NASA’s commercial cargo program. The launch originally scheduled for yesterday had to be scrubbed due to weather constrains. Unlike the recent satellite launches which had long launch…
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Exciting times in Space
A lot has happened in Space or related to Space recently and the future is looking very bright. Below is a summary of some of the recent news and upcoming events. SpaceX and Boeing awarded CCtCap contracts – We now have two companies contracted to build manned spacecraft to deliver crew to the ISS. Currently…