FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND COMMERCIAL ASTRONAUT MISSION HEADS FOR SPACE STATION - Strapped in the seats of a SpaceX crew capsule, a retired NASA astronaut and three wealthy paying passengers rocketed into orbit Friday from the Kennedy Space Center on the first fully commercial mission to the International Space Station. The commercial crew mission, managed by a Houston-based company named Axiom Space, is slated to last 10 or 11 days. The flight is the first mission to travel to the space station as part of a purely commercial venture. All previous space station missions have been government-led or contracted by a government space agency. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 9)
CHINA LAUNCHES NEW SATELLITE FOR EARTH OBSERVATION - China launched a new Earth observation satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Thursday. The satellite, Gaofen-3 03, was launched by a Long March-4C rocket at 7:47 a.m. (Beijing Time) and has entered the planned orbit successfully. The satellite will be networked with the orbiting Gaofen-3 and Gaofen-3 02 satellites to form a land-sea radar satellite constellation and capture reliable, stable synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. More (Source: xinhuanet.com - Apr 8)
SPACEX POISED TO SEND FIRST PRIVATE CREW TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION FOR AXIOM SPACE - Tomorrow morning, SpaceX is set to launch yet another crew of four to the International Space Station from Florida — but unlike most of the company’s passenger flights, this new crop of flyers won’t include any current NASA astronauts. All four members of the crew are civilians, flying with a commercial aerospace company called Axiom Space. Their flight will mark the first time a completely private crew has visited the ISS. It’s a new type of human spaceflight mission and one that comes with a hefty price tag for its participants. More (Source: The Verge - Apr 8)
STATION CREW PREPS FOR SPACEWALKS AND AX-1 MISSION - The seven-member Expedition 67 crew is gearing up for a pair of spacewalks scheduled for later this month while ensuring the International Space Station orbits Earth in tip-top shape. Meanwhile, the first private astronaut mission is less than one day from launching toward the orbital lab. NASA astronaut Raja Chari is helping two cosmonauts get ready for two spacewalks planned for April to outfit the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. More (Source: NASA - Apr 8)
SATELLITE COMPANIES JOIN THE HUNT FOR RUSSIAN WAR CRIMES - It’s an unlikely theme here at the largest annual gathering of space industry executives: how to help bring war criminals to justice. The expanding constellations of commercial spy satellites that have been capturing high-resolution photos and radar images of Russian troop movements are now proving to be a game-changing tool for international authorities and human rights groups who are aggressively working to document Russia’s targeting of civilians in Ukraine. More (Source: Politico - Apr 7)
NASA USES REFLECTED MOONLIGHT TO IMPROVE SATELLITE ACCURACY - NASA’s airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, flew aboard NASA’s ER-2 aircraft from March 12 to 16 to accurately measure the amount of light reflected off the Moon. Reflected moonlight is a steady source of light that researchers are taking advantage of to improve the accuracy and consistency of measurements among Earth-observing satellites. More (Source: SciTechDaily - Apr 7)
NO, RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS WERE NOT MAKING A PRO-UKRAINE STATEMENT WITH THEIR SPACESUITS - A NASA astronaut who just returned from the International Space Station says his Russian counterparts who boarded the ISS wearing yellow and blue spacesuits were not doing so to support Ukraine. Mark Vande Hei, who returned to Earth on March 30 after nearly a year in space, said the yellow and blue colors represent the university the Russian cosmonauts attended. More (Source: NPR - Apr 7)
SPACEWALKS, CREWED MISSIONS, AND SCIENCE: MARCH IN ORBIT ABOARD THE ISS - NASASpaceFlight.com Forums L2 Sign Up Artemis SpaceX Commercial ISS International Other Shop Spacewalks, crewed missions, and science: March in orbit aboard the ISS written by Haygen Warren April 2, 2022 The International Space Station (ISS) and its astronauts had a busy March as teams performed spacewalks, welcomed new crewmembers, said goodbye to those returning to Earth, and prepared for the arrival of the first private mission to the iconic orbital outpost. All the while, groundbreaking science research was being performed using the space station’s many labs and instruments. The International Space Station Expedition 66 crew — consisting of astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Matthias Maurer, and Kayla Barron, and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, joined later in the month by Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov... More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Apr 7)
AMAZON JOINS ORBITAL REEF COMMERCIAL SPACE STATION PROJECT - Amazon is getting into the private space station business. The company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos has joined the Orbital Reef commercial space station project to provide supply-chain logistics and Amazon Web Services for the private orbital outpost, which is slated to launch by the late 2020s. The Orbital Reef project is led by Blue Origin (another company founded by Bezos) and Sierra Space, and is a partnership with Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering and Arizona State University. More (Source: Space.com - Apr 6)
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