Category: Missions
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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…
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New Horizons Mission to Pluto/Charon
Today NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft passed the Orbit of Neptune exactly 25 years after Voyager 2 passed the same planet. At the time it passed the orbit Neptune was 4 million kilometers away as it proceeded on it’s orbit around the sun. To celebrate this milestone NASA talked about the mission of New Horizons as…
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Rosetta arrives at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
After a 10 year, 5 month, 4 day journey the European Space Agencies Rosetta spacecraft has arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Having spent the last few weeks refining it’s approach and returning amazing images (see below) of the Comet it finally arrived in it’s initial orbit earlier this morning. Due to the small size and low…
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Mars 2020 Rover Instruments revealed
Today NASA announced the seven instruments that will be flown on the Mars 2020 Rover. The rover uses the same design as Curiosity that is currently operating on the surface of Mars today. The final requirements for the whole rover will be complete about a year from now. A landing site has not yet been…
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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 6/20
Hubble to search for New Horizons next target When New Horizons was first launched towards Pluto the plan was for it to complete it’s mission and then fly on to another object in the Kuiper belt and perform the same observations as it does at Pluto. The second destination has not yet been choose and researchers…
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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 5/30
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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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…