Exploring The Frontier Of Space
Unmanned Spaceflight
SpaceX’s 16th Commercial Resupply Services mission successfully blasted off Wednesday carrying 5,600 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station. The company’s Dragon spacecraft lifted off at 1:16 p.m. EST on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. On its way to the space station, […]
NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft completed its 1.2 billion-mile (2 billion-kilometer) journey to arrive at the asteroid Bennu Monday. The spacecraft executed a maneuver that transitioned it from flying toward Bennu to operating around the asteroid. Now, at about 11.8 miles (19 kilometers) from Bennu’s Sun-facing surface, OSIRIS-REx will begin a preliminary […]
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida took another step forward in its transformation to a 21st Century multi-user spaceport with the completion of the new Small Class Vehicle Launch Pad, designated 39C, in the Launch Pad 39B area. This designated pad to test smaller rockets will make it more affordable for smaller aerospace companies to […]
Sunday’s loss of the 19th Falcon 9 rocket on its seventh mission to deliver cargo to the International Space Station has left SpaceX searching for answers and facing a potentially months-long grounding of its flagship launch vehicle. Complicating matters for the ISS program, the loss of the Dragon CRS-7 spacecraft follows on the heels of […]
With help from NASA, a small research satellite to test technology for in-space solar propulsion launched into space Wednesday aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, as part of the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. Check Out Our Atlas V / AFSPC-5 Photo Gallery! Watch Our Launch Videos! The Atlas V […]
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. […]
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 […]
ULA is offering the public the opportunity to select the name of the company’s Next Generation Launch System (NGLS) rocket. Out of more than 300 names suggested by ULA employees, three finalists will be announced today at 9:30 am. The public will get to vote on their favorite until April 6. (UPDATE: The three name […]
Over the weekend, SpaceX filled in some of the specifics regarding the recent decision to delay the launch of TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSAT, manufactured by Thales, due to what has been reported as a problem with helium pressurizing bottles on the Falcon 9 first stage for the mission. According to Space News‘ Jeff Foust, SpaceX spokesman John Taylor […]
On May 10, 1869, Leland Stanford raised a hammer and drove a golden spike into railroad tracks in Promontory, Utah. It marked the symbolic completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. For the first time in American history, the East and West were connected. The Transcontinental Railroad would transform the United States by establishing a national economy […]