Category: Exoplanets
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Weekly Space News 6/27
This week in space… SpaceX causes a stir and has another delay Last Saturday SpaceX caused quite a stir on the Internet when they announced there would be no live web-cast of the Orbcomm OG2 launch attempt that evening. A spokesperson for SpaceX said they had been planning to move away from web-casting because launches…
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Weekly Space Blog 6/13
Orbital ISS Launched Delayed again The ORB-2 Cygnus cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has been delayed again due to the on-going investigation into an AJ26 engine failure last month during testing. The Antares rocket which launches the Cygnus spacecraft uses two of the AJ26 engines on the first stage to orbit. The…
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Weekly Space Blog 6/6
Kepler back online The Kepler spacecraft that was sidelined last year after two of it’s gyroscopes failed has been re-purposed to the K2 mission. The original mission of Kepler was to continuously observe the same patch of the sky looking for slight dips in the brightness of the star. This indicated that a planet or…
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Weekly Space Blog 5/16
Soyuz TMA-11M crew lands safely The three crew members of TMA-11M landed safely after spending 188 days in space, See full article here Russia fires back over US Sanctions This week Russia fire back against US sanctions in two key areas, the first was to spurn NASA’s proposal to extend the life of the ISS through 2024.…
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Weekly Space Blog 5/2
We are back with our weekly blog, and what an interesting week it has been. SpaceX announce suit against ULA Block Buy On Friday 4/25, SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk announced that SpaceX had filed a suit protesting the bulk buy of Rocket Core’s from ULA. SpaceX made several arguments against the block buy, including the…
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Weekly Space Blog 12/7
SpaceX third try a success Following two delays because of technical issues during countdown SpaceX successfully launched the SES-8 spacecraft on Tuesday. This was a critical mission for SpaceX as it was there first to GTO and also the first to require a re-light of the second stage engine to ensure the spacecraft arrived at…
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Weekly Space Blog 11/9
India’s first Mars Orbiter Mangalyaan launched successfully This week India successfully launched their first Mars Orbiter called Mangalyaan, the spacecraft was launched by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket (PSLV) from India’s launch site, Satish Dhawan Space Center. If all goes well the spacecraft is due to arrive in Sept 2014 and will make India only the fourth nation…
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Weekly Space Blog 11/2
We are back after a rather long delay due to upgrading to Windows 8.1 and losing everything that was installed on the machine :(… Cygnus completes COTS demo mission The Orbital Sciences Cygnus spacecraft completed it’s final test mission under the C.O.T.S program with a fiery end during re-entry to earth’s atmosphere. Following a week…
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Weekly Space Blog 8/24
WISE approved for asteroid survey NASA announced this week that the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft will be taken out of hibernation to start a three year mission to search for Near Earth Objects. While the primary instruments on the vehicle required frozen hydrogen to operate which ran out in 2011 the other instruments…
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Weekly Space Blog 7/13
Another week has come and gone and the stories continue to flow in, this week we have a number of exciting stories plus four Kickstarter projects related to space. Bold New Plan for first SLS/Orion Launch This week NASA managers announced the new plan which would see the first uncrewed mission named EM-1 travel to…