Category: Space
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The Re-usable Rocket Era approaches
While SpaceX have yet to successfully land a Falcon 9 first stage it appears their vision has spurred the industry to react with both United Launch Alliance (ULA) and now Airbus Aerospace announcing plans to include re-usable components in future rocket designs. The three companies have quite different plans to achieve the re-use. SpaceX – Plan…
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LightSail deployment planned for Wednesday
Following the successful resumption of communications with the LightSail spacecraft the mission team are planning to deploy the Solar Sails on Wednesday this week. They were looking to deploy on Tuesday but to ensure everything is working as needed they added an extra day to the plan. The LightSail team will use tomorrow for a…
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LightSail is back
Following a week of silence caused by a software fault on the LightSail spacecraft it started communicating with Earth earlier today. LIGHTSAIL CONTACT! Cal Poly received two beacon packets today during a pass at 5:21 EDT (21:21 UTC). Initial analysis shows reboot occurred. — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) May 30, 2015 As the tweet above shows…
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NASA awards first Commercial Crew Flight Contract
This week NASA announced that it had awarded Boeing the first Commercial Crew flight contract under the CCtCap program. However it is important to realize that while the contract has been awarded, as NASA started in the press release. Determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at…
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Is ULA’s new rocket doomed?
With great fanfare United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced their new Vulcan Rocket last month. However since then the news has not been quite so rosy for the company. Almost immediately after the announcement Paul Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace informed ULA that the name was trademarked, at present we have not heard anything further on this but…
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PMM relocated on ISS
This morning the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 moved the Permanent Multipurpose Module from the Unity module to the Tranquility module. The module which was previously flown as a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) aboard the Space Shuttle was left at the station in February 2011 to provide additional storage space. The was moved to continue the…
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NASA announces Europa Mission Instrument Selection
This afternoon NASA announced the Instruments that will be flown to Europa in 2020s. The NASA selectees are: Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) — principal investigator Dr. Joseph Westlake of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland. This instrument works in conjunction with a magnetometer and is key to determining Europa’s ice shell…
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UPDATE – LightSail falls silent
Last week the Planetary Society launched the first privately funded Solar Sail spacecraft as a secondary payload on a Atlas V rocket. During the first couple of days the spacecraft was transmitting data back to Earth during various passes over the ground stations. However the teams have not heard from the spacecraft since, they are…
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LightSail in orbit
The first privately built Solar Sail spacecraft LightSail is now in orbit. Built by the Planetary Society the spacecraft was launched as a secondary payload on the Atlas V that launched earlier today. The successful deployment of the CubeSat was confirmed by the Societies Jason Davies via Twitter. Official #LightSail deployment time: 17:05:40.620, hh:mm:ss.sss (UTC).…
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Atlas V launches military’s X-37B space plane
Following a smooth countdown today United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V launched the military’s X-37B space plane. The rocket lifted off from SLC-41 and carried the space plane to orbit before deploying it, the rocket also carried a secondary payload of Cubesat’s including The Planetary Societies LightSail test. The Planetary Society is currently raising money…