ANTARES ROCKET LAUNCHES NEW ASTRONAUT TOILET AND MORE TO SPACE STATION FOR NASA - A robotic Cygnus spacecraft successfully blasted off from Virginia late Friday (Oct. 2) carrying nearly 4 tons of gear, including a new space toilet, to the International Space Station. A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket lit up the night sky alongside a nearly full moon at 9:16 p.m. EDT (0116 GMT on Oct. 3) as it launched the Cygnus NG-14 mission to the space station from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. More (Source: Space.com - Oct 3)
ASTRONAUTS HOME IN ON INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION AIR LEAK - Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have successfully narrowed down the source of a small air leak that had been growing in size. Kenny Todd, deputy manager of the space station, said the leak was first detected more than a year ago but had increased in the past couple of months. A fresh round of testing overnight Monday revealed the leak was in a service module in the Russian segment, Todd said during a NASA briefing Tuesday. More (Source: CNN - Oct 2)
NORTHROP GRUMMAN ABORTS LAUNCH OF ANTARES ROCKET CARRYING NASA CARGO MINUTES BEFORE LIFTOFF - A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket carrying nearly 4 tons of NASA supplies for the International Space Station suffered a launch abort just minutes before liftoff late Thursday (Oct. 1). The rocket was less than three minutes from liftoff when it experienced the automatic abort while sitting atop Pad 0A of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. The launch was targeted for 9:43 p.m. EDT (0143 GMT on Oct. 2). More (Source: Space.com - Oct 2)
SPACEX ABORTS THIRD ATTEMPT OF STARLINK V1.0 LAUNCH 12 - The Starlink v1.0 Launch 12 mission aborted at T-18 seconds due to a ground sensor issue on Thursday morning from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. This was the third attempt to get the mission off the ground. During the previous launch attempt on September 28th, the Falcon 9 was fueled and the countdown proceeded to T- 31 seconds, when a scrub was called due to weather. The mission then had to wait for the range to become available again as the NROL-44 mission had priority. More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Oct 1)
GOES-T SATELLITE UNDERGOES TESTING TO SIMULATE LAUNCH AND ORBIT CONDITIONS - GOES-T, the third satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series, is fully assembled and beginning a set of rigorous tests to ensure it can withstand the harsh conditions of launch and the space environment in which it will reside once it reaches geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above Earth. The testing is taking place at Lockheed Martin Corporation’s Littleton, Colorado, facility, where the spacecraft was built More (Source: WeatherNation - Oct 1)
KEPLER LAUNCHES FIRST INTERNALLY PRODUCED SATELLITES - Canadian startup Kepler Communications launched Sept. 28 the first two satellites built in its own facility as the company ramps up its plans to deploy a constellation for data and Internet of Things services. The two six-unit XL cubesats, known as Kepler-4 and Kepler-5 but nicknamed Antilles and Amidala, were among the 15 smallsat secondary payloads brokered by Exolaunch that launched on a Soyuz-2.1b from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 7:20 a.m. Eastern. The primary payload for the launch was a trio of Gonets satellites for the Russian government. More (Source: SpaceNews - Sep 30)
RUSSIA LAUNCHES 3 GONETS COMMUNICATION SATELLITES, 18 INTERNATIONAL SMALLSATS - The Russian Aerospace Forces, itself a division of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, have launched a batch of three Gonets civilian communication satellites as well as 18 international rideshare payloads. Liftoff of the Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket occurred at 11:20 UTC (07:20 EDT) on Monday, 28 September 2020, from Site No. 43 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome — located 800 km north of Moscow. More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Sep 30)
AIR LEAKING FROM INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION BUT NO DANGER TO CREW - ROSCOSMOS AGENCY - The International Space Station is leaking air in above-normal volumes, but the leak presents no danger to the Russian-American crew, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday. The leak has been localised to one section of a service module and the crew, made up of U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, plan to eliminate it in the coming days, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Roscosmos executive director Sergei Krikalev as saying. More (Source: Reuters - Sep 30)
CHINESE AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITE LAUNCHES DELAYED - CAMSAT says the CAS-7A launch has been postponed until next May, and CAS-5A until next June. “Because of COVID-19, many things have been delayed,” CAMSAT’s Alan Kung, BA1DU, told ARRL. He said an announcement would be made closer to the announced launches. CAMSAT said last spring that CAS-7A would launch in mid-September; the launch has been postponed multiple times since first announced. CAS-5A was predicted to launch in October. More (Source: ARRL - Sep 30)
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