A loud whoosh, faint smoke trail and billowing parachutes marked a successful demonstration Wednesday by SpaceX of its Crew Dragon spacecraft abort system – an important step in NASA’s endeavor to rebuild America’s ability to launch crews to the International Space Station from U.S. soil. The successful test of the spacecraft’s launch escape capabilities proved […]
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Five Things To Know About Dragon’s Pad Abort Test
Crew Dragon’s first critical flight test, known as a Pad Abort Test, is expected to take place this Wednesday, May 6, from SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in Cape Canaveral, Florida. While the test is originating from the same launch pad we use for operational missions, this is not an operational flight. This will […]
Blue Origin Conducts First Test Flight Of New Shepard Suborbital Rocket
Secretive space startup Blue Origin achieved a significant milestone on April 29 with the first development flight of the company’s New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle and spacecraft from its west Texas test site. The first all-up flight test was mostly successful and the rocket carried the uncrewed capsule to an altitude of over 58 miles. […]
NASA Launches RockSat-X Sounding Rocket With University Payloads
A NASA Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket carrying the RockSat-X payload was successfully launched at 7:01 a.m. EDT, Saturday, April 18, 2015. The rocket carried experiments developed by undergraduate students from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho, the University of Puerto Rico, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and […]
Falcon 9 Blasts Off With Cargo Supporting NASA’s One-Year Mission
Two tons of supplies and research cargo are headed to the International Space Station today following the successful launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. After a one-day delay due to strong high-altitude winds, the rocket lifted off on time at 4:10:11 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 carrying Dragon on […]
American And Russian Begin Yearlong Orbital Journey
ISS One-Year Mission Expedition 43 Soyuz TMA-16M Launch Coverage NASA TV A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off for the International Space Station today. Their launch wasn’t historic in its own right. After all, the three are members of the 43rd expeditionary crew to live aboard the outpoust. What is groundbreaking is the […]
Delta IV Hits The Mark With Another Successful GPS Launch
Piercing a thick layer of clouds that hung low over the lannch pad, A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral on March 25, 2015 and successfully orbited the Global Positioning System GPS IIF-9 satellit efor the U.S. Air Force. Liftoff occurred on time at 2:36 p.m. EDT at the beginning […]
Aerojet Rocketdyne Gets Fired Up About 3D Printing
Additive Manufacturing, also known as 3d printing, has been something of a hot topic in the aerospace industry lately. There is even a 3D printer from Made In Space, Inc. (http://www.madeinspace.us) onboard the International Space Station, recently installed to investigate the possiblities for in-space manufacturing of tools and components. Well, things just heated up even […]
Technical Issues Prompt Falcon 9 Launch Delay For TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSAT
Technical problems with the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage have forced SpaceX to delay launch of of TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSAT until no earlier than March 28, according to officials with spacecraft manufacturer Thales Alenia Space. SpaceX’s fourth mission of 2015 had been scheduled to blast off from SLc-40 at Cape Canaveral AFS on Saturday, March 21 at […]
Spectacular Launch Delivers MMS Probes To Study Magentic Reconnection
NASA’s first-of-its kind mission to study the violent interactions of the magnetic fields surrounding Earth got underway last night with a spectacular blastoff of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral AFS. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) lifted off on time at 10:44 p.m. EDT, beginning the third of […]