Category: Space
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5000 and counting
As of today the International Space Station has been continuously occupied for 5,000 days. The adventure began on November 2nd 2000 when the three member Expedition One crew arrived at the station. Since that time there have been 214 visitors on the station including the six that are currently on the station, there have been 37 shuttle visits,…
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Orb2 launch delayed
The launch of the Orbital Science’s Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus Cargo Vehicle named SS Janice Voss has been delayed until tomorrow 7/13 due to severe weather at Wallops Island that delayed several steps in the processing of the rocket on the launch pad. The launch is now scheduled for 12:52 pm EDT, for mission updates…
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Soyuz Launches O3b Satellites
This afternoon a Soyuz rocket lifted off from Guiana Space Centre carrying four 03b satellites to orbit. These satellites will complement the existing 03b satellites that are already in orbit and provide high speed internet around the world. The rocket lifted off as expected at 2:55 pm EDT, 2m later the four strap-on boosters completed…
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Upcoming Launches
It’s going to be a busy few days with three separate launches. Later today at 2:55 PM EDT a Soyuz is scheduled to liftoff from French Guiana carrying four satellites for O3b Networks. Then on Saturday 7/12 at 01:14 PM EDT an Antares is scheduled to liftoff from Wallops Island carrying a Cygnus spacecraft for…
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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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SpaceX unveils Dragon v2 – Crew Vehicle
This evening Elon Musk unveiled the next version of the Dragon spacecraft designed to take crews to the International Space Station and beyond. The crewed version of Dragon has undergone quite a transformation from the first version which was hanging above the crowd during the unveiling. The spacecraft is much bigger then before, has SuperDraco…