Tag: NASA
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Soyuz TMA-17M launches to ISS
Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren launched this evening from Baikonur Cosmodrome towards the International Space Station. Once in orbit the spacecraft deployed its solar panels and KURS docking antenna’s before beginning the six hours, four orbit chase of the ISS. We will follow up with an article…
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New Horizons Phones Home
Following this mornings flyby of Pluto the New Horizons spacecraft has phoned home. And tomorrow morning it will starting returning the high priority data from its numerous observations. The spacecraft which was launched in Jan, 2006 has traveled more than 3.2 billion miles to reach the Pluto system, during the 9.5 years of travel most of…
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And now we wait #PlutoFlyby
New Horizons has completed its closest approach to Pluto with a historic flyby at 7:50am EDT today, however we will not hear back from the spacecraft for another 12 hours as it will now turn around and continue observations as it moves away from the system, this time with our Sun in the background. The…
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T-1 days until #PlutoFlyby
By this time tomorrow NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will be zooming past the Dwarf Plant Pluto capturing details of the planet from just 12,500 km (7,800 mi) away closer than any spacecraft has ever been. The spacecraft is now deep in the encounter mode of operation, this means that if anything goes wrong it will…
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New Horizons Suffers Safe-Mode event
Just 10 days before New Horizons closest approach to Pluto it suffered a Safe-Mode event on Saturday causing a lost of communications when the spacecraft handled the event and switched to its backup computer system. Thankfully the backup system took over and re-established communications and begun sending data back to Mission Control to allow them…
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T-14 days and counting to New Horizons Pluto Flyby
A journey that started 3451 days ago aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V is rapidly closing in on its primary destination Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first to visit the Pluto system and will bring the distant planet and its five moons to life. In 14 days it will reach its…
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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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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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Why we need multiple providers for Space Access
It became clear again this week why it is critical that we have multiple providers to access Space. With the Progress 59 (M-27M) failure recently the International Partners involved in the ISS have now had to rescheduled several future flights to accommodate the loss of the vehicle and allow time for the investigation into the loss…
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SpaceX CRS-6 mission lifts off
SpaceX completed it’s fourth launch of 2015 with the liftoff of the CRS-6 Dragon capsule towards the International Space Station. SpaceX confirmed that after separation from the second stage the Dragon spacecraft successfully deployed it’s Solar Array’s and is now heading towards the International Space Station. It is scheduled to arrive at approximately 7:00 a.m. EDT on…