WIND SENSOR FAILURE ENDS LONG-LIVED SATELLITE MISSION - A spinning antenna on NASA's QuikSCAT satellite has failed after more than a decade of operations, leaving weather forecasters without a critical tool to measure winds inside distant hurricanes and adding fuel to a political firestorm on a potential replacement. QuikSCAT has been used as an operational resource by meteorologists around the world. It has proven particularly invaluable in gauging the location, size and strength of hurricanes in the open ocean, far from land-based radars and outside the range of reconnaissance aircraft.    More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Nov 25)

CREW OF STS-129 - WORK HARD AND PLAY HARD - The crew of STS-129 onboard the space shuttle Atlantis must realize that theirs is a shorter-than-average mission, (STS-129 is scheduled to last only 11days), therefore they are making the most of every second they have available to them. When in the inky black of space the crew hammers out its assignments in record time. When inside, the crew shook off numerous false "depress alarms", (you know those pesky things that are telling you your air is leaking out into space). With the pace of work, the alarms must have seemed like an annoyance to this crew, making one imagine a slightly modified quote from Jesse "The Body' Ventura from the film Predator - "I ain't got time to breathe!"    More
(Source: Examiner.com - Nov 24)

LAUNCH OF PROTON ROCKET CARRYING EUROPEAN SATELLITE DELAYED - The launch of a Proton-M carrier rocket bearing the European Eutelsat W7 satellite has been delayed, the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said on Monday. The launch was scheduled for Monday from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. "The launch of the European space vehicle has been postponed by the Kazakh side for an indefinite period," Roscosmos said. The agency also said that the reason for the delay was unclear, as the areas in which the rocket's spent parts would fall into had already been agreed on with Kazakh authorities.    More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Nov 23)

INTELSAT 14 LAUNCHES ON ATLAS V AV-024 AT SECOND ATTEMPT - A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V has launched at the second attempt with the Intelsat 14 communications satellite. Launch was delayed several times in the count due to upper level wind data requirements - eventually lifting off at 01:55am Eastern. The successful launch followed a scrub and rollback to repair a ORCA (Ordnance Remote Control Assembly) a week ago.   More
(Source: NASASpaceflight.com - Nov 23)

ATLANTIS' ISS MISSION PROCEEDING SMOOTHLY - Despite a false depressurization caution alarm, the space shuttle Atlantis is on target and ahead of schedule to complete a near perfect -- so far -- mission to the International Space Station. The space shuttle Atlantis' 11-day mission to the ISS (International Space Station) is going so smoothly the only glitch so far has been a Nov. 19 false depressurization caution alarm that aroused the crews of the Atlantis and the ISS from their sleep. Otherwise, the mission has been surprisingly glitch free.   More
(Source: eWeek - Nov 22)

NASA ASSUMES OWNERSHIP OF NEXT SPACE STATION MODULE - The European Space Agency formally handed over ownership of the Tranquility module to NASA on Friday, two-and-a-half months before the connecting node's February launch on shuttle Endeavour. The exchange occurred in a ceremony inside the Space Station Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center. ESA space station program manager Bernardo Pitto signed over control of the module to Mike Suffredini, the NASA station program manager.   More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Nov 21)

FALSE ALARMS PROMPT SPACE STATION SCARE - Astronauts aboard the international space station and space shuttle Atlantis woke up to a worrying sound -- alarms indicating a fire and dangerous loss of pressure, NASA said Friday. However, a check revealed no serious trouble. Depressurization-caution alarms sounded just after 8:30 p.m. ET Thursday, waking the shuttle and station crew, NASA said. The flight control teams on the ground determined there was no depressurization and shut off ventilation fans.   More
(Source: CNN - Nov 21)

IRAN PLANS TO LAUNCH SATELLITE BY 2011 - It seems no one is willing to help, so Iran says it will send a communications satellite into orbit on its own. Tehran says the satellite will help data communication, but Israeli media have claimed that it's a spy satellite. Iran announced a couple weeks ago that Italy would launch the satellite, after waiting for years for Russia to do it. But the Italian space company that it had supposedly lined up denied the report.   More
(Source: Fox News - Nov 21)

SOYUZ ROCKET LAUNCHES MILITARY PAYLOAD TO ORBIT - Russia launched a military spy satellite into space Friday on a Soyuz rocket from the country's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, according to the defense ministry. The secret payload lifted off at 1044 GMT (5:44 a.m. EST), or in the early afternoon at Plesetsk, a military-run launch base in Russia's northern Arkhangelsk Oblast. The three-stage Soyuz rocket delivered the spacecraft to an elliptical orbit with a high point of about 560 miles and a low point of approximately 120 miles. The orbit's inclination is about 67.2 degrees, according to tracking data.    More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Nov 21)

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