Category: ISS
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Weekly Space Blog 5/30
Sea Launch successfully launches Eutelsat Satellite Following a 15 month gap between mission’s Sea Launch returned on Monday to successfully launch a 6.6 ton Eutelsat 3B satellite. The Zenit 3SL rocket lifted off successfully and following a nominal flight successfully deployed the satellite to orbit. The communication’s satellite will now use it’s engine’s to transfer…
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Soyuz TMA-13M completes six hour flight to ISS
At 3:57 pm EDT this afternoon the Soyuz TMA-13M lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency flight engineer Alexander Gerst. Following a successful climb to orbit the spacecraft began a four orbit, six hour journey towards the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft completed docking at…
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Weekly Space Blog 5/23
SpaceX Dragon completes successful mission Last Sunday at 3:05pm the SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully completed it’s CRS-3 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with a splashdown in the Pacific ocean. Launched on April 18th aboard a Falcon 9 rocket the Dragon spacecraft, carrying nearly 5,000 lbs of supplies and payloads including two in the…
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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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Expedition 39 Mission concludes
Yesterday Station Commander Koichi Wakata handed control of the International Space Station to US Astronaut Steve Swanson to begin the final stage of the TMA-11M crews return to earth. Mikhail Tyurin, Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata have spent the last 188 days on the space station, during which time they saw the departure of Progress M-22M, the…
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Weekly Blog 5/9
This week in Space News SpaceX launch of Orbcomm OG2 satellites delayed The planned launch of six commercial communications satellites for Orbcomm has been delayed. The planned static fire test on Thursday was called off after SpaceX ran into technical trouble during the countdown. The static fire test was rescheduled for Friday but was stopped while the rocket…
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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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International Space Station US EVA 26 complete
Earlier today Astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson stepped outside the International Space Station for a 1h 36m spacewalk to replace a failed Multiplexer/Demultiplexer (MDM) unit. In addition they completed a get-ahead task to remove two lanyard’s from the Secondary Power Distribution Assembly SPDA doors, this will allow the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator attachment of the Canadarm2 to…
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SpaceX CRS-3 Report
Well after a four month break I am pleased to say the blog is back and will be updated regularly. The reason for the long hiatus was due to a busy Christmas session quickly followed by the birth of my third daughter Annabella in January. Today’s post will focus on last weeks launch, capture and berthing…
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Weekly Space Blog 12/14
A lot has been happening this week in Space ISS Coolant Failure This week one of the two coolant systems on the station shutdown when a component reached a preset temperature limit. While not posing an immediate danger to the crew on-board the shutdown did require that NASA shutdown non-critical systems on the station to…