Category: ISS
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3 Weeks and Counting to SpaceX Launch
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…
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More Delays
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…
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Latest News from ISS
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…
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And then there were six
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…
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Falling Behind
China are on the verge of surpassing the US for second place in the number of spacecraft launched in a single year. Last year we were tied for second place and so far this year have one more mission than China but with no more planned US launches this year and at least one more…
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NASA Budget
This week the new Budget was signed into law and NASA’s funding for the Commercial Crew development has been slashed. So what does this mean for the future? As we are currently looking at Commercial Space and the different teams who are involved it seems appropriate to review this further and see what real impact…
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Commercial Space – Part Six
Today we continue our look at Commercial Space with Boeing and there contribution to the CCDev/CCDev2 programs. Boeing Working with Bigelow the CST-100 will provide crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station. The CST-100 was first announced by Robert Bigelow in June 2010, just last month NASA announced that Boeing had signed an…
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Commercial Space – Part Five
Today we look at Blue Origin and there contribution to the CCDev/CCDev2 programs. Blue Origin Blue Origin are working on the New Shepherd sub-orbital craft to provide customer’s trip to the edge of space, allow a period of time of weightlessness before returning to the launch site. Unlike Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo this will be a…
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Commercial Space – Part Four
Now we move onto the NASA Commercial Crew Development (CCDev/CCDev2) providers. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) SNC are currently working on the Dream Chaser spacecraft, designed to lift off on top a man-rated launcher with Delta-V as the current preferred booster. The craft is designed to transport up to seven astronauts as well as cargo. Exact…
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Commercial Space – Part Two
Today we continue our look at the Commercial Space Industry and what Orbital Sciences Corporation has to offer. Orbital Sciences Corporation Orbital is not a new comer to the Space Launch business having been started in 1982 and completed 62 space launch missions since. They currently offer the air launched Pegasus rocket, the ground launched…