NASA TV COVERAGE OF NEXT RESUPPLY MISSION TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - NASA commercial cargo provider Orbital ATK is scheduled to launch its eighth mission to the International Space Station at 7:37 a.m. EST Saturday, Nov. 11 NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Live launch coverage will begin at 7 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency’s website. NASA TV also will air two prelaunch briefings Friday, Nov. 10. At 11 a.m. mission managers will provide an overview and status of launch operations, and at 3 p.m. scientists and researchers will discuss some of the investigations and technology demonstrations to be delivered to the station. More (Source: Southgate Amateur Radio Club - Nov 8)
NASA MAY NEED MORE RUSSIAN RIDES TO KEEP AMERICANS ON SPACE STATION - A complicated set of challenges with its commercial crew program may require NASA to buy more rides from Russia to keep American astronauts on the International Space Station after 2018, NASA auditors said Monday. Part of the problem is challenges Boeing and SpaceX found in designing their crew capsules, according to a report by the NASA Office of Inspector General. The other part is the result of NASA delays in reviewing changes they've made in their spacecraft. More (Source: AL.com - Nov 8)
BATTERY CHANGEOUT DELAYS WEATHER SATELLITE LAUNCH FROM CALIFORNIA - The launch of a new U.S. weather satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has been delayed at least four days to Nov. 14, allowing time for technicians to remove and replace a faulty battery on the payload’s Delta 2 rocket, United Launch Alliance said Monday. The satellite is set to head into an orbit circling over Earth’s poles, replenishing NOAA’s fleet of space-based meteorological sentinels and inaugurating a new generation of weather observatories to collect images of clouds and measurements of atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 7)
CHINA LAUNCHES TWO BEIDOU SATELLITES IN RETURN TO FLIGHT FOR LONG MARCH 3B ROCKET - China on Sunday added two more satellites to its Beidou navigation and positioning system following the launch of a Long March 3B rocket from Xichang launch centre. The launch vehicle lifted off from Xichang in the hills of southwestern Sichuan Province at 11:45 UTC (19:45 Beijing time), with the satellites inserted into preset medium Earth orbits by a Yuanzheng-1 upper stage. With no launch coverage, the first indications of liftoff came from Chinese social media channels, including amateur footage. More (Source: GBTIMES - Nov 6)
ARIANESPACE POISED TO LAUNCH VEGA WITH MOHAMMED VI–A SATELLITE - Arianespace is ready to launch the MOHAMMED VI–A satellite on behalf of the Kingdom of Morocco on November 7, 2017, at 10:42 p.m. local time (01:42 GMT). The spacecraft is slated to lift off from the Guiana Space Centre’s Vega Launch Complex (SLV) and will mark the 10th flight of the year for the Courcouronnes, Essonne, France-based firm. If everything goes according to plan, Tuesday’s launch will be the 11th for Vega since the rocket first took to the skies in 2012 (and the eighth time that Vega has been tapped to launch an Earth-observation payload). Vega has been tasked with placing the satellite into a Sun-synchronous orbit. More (Source: SpaceFlight Insider - Nov 6)
CHINA AIMS TO LAUNCH REUSABLE SPACE PLANE BY 2020 - China plans to launch a homegrown, reusable space plane for the first time in 2020, according to Chinese media reports. "The spacecraft can transport people or payload into the orbit and return to Earth," China's state-run outlet Xinhua reported last week. Xinhua cited a statement by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), as well as Chen Hongbo, a researcher at the corporation: "Chen said that the spacecraft will be easier to maintain and can improve the frequency of launches at lower cost, bringing new opportunities for more people to travel into space." More (Source: Space.com - Nov 4)
WIND SATELLITE VACUUM PACKED - With liftoff on the horizon, ESA's Aeolus satellite is going through its last round of tests to make sure that this complex mission will work in orbit. Over the next month, it is sitting in a large chamber that has had all the air sucked out to simulate the vacuum of space. Aeolus carries one of the most sophisticated instruments ever to be put into orbit: Aladin, which includes two powerful lasers, a large telescope and very sensitive receivers. More (Source: Phys.org - Nov 3)
NASA TO LET SPACEX LAUNCH ISS DELIVERIES ON USED ROCKETS - SpaceX just secured permission to do something it has been planning for years, fly NASA payloads on Falcon 9 first stage boosters that have previously been launched and landed. According to NASASpaceflight.com, NASA has approved the use of a "flight-proven" Falcon 9 rocket for CRS-13, the 13th SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station. It's hard to overstate the significance of this announcement for SpaceX. The company has been perfecting vertical rocket landings ever since it stuck the first one back in December 2015, and those SpaceX aerospace engineers have gotten good, successfully landing all 12 Falcon 9 first stage boosters this year in missions where a landing was attempted. More (Source: Popular Mechanics - Nov 3)
TEN COMMERCIAL EARTH-OBSERVING SATELLITES LAUNCHED ABOARD MINOTAUR-C ROCKET - Returning to service after a six-year hiatus, Orbital ATK’s revamped Minotaur-C rocket soared into space Tuesday from California’s Central Coast with 10 commercial Earth-imaging spacecraft for Planet, a San Francisco-based company with a globe-spanning satellite fleet mapping the world’s land masses every day. The 104-foot-tall (32-meter) rocket ignited its solid-fueled Castor 120 first stage booster at 2:37 p.m. PDT (5:37 p.m. EDT; 2137 GMT) Tuesday after a smooth countdown, quickly climbing away from pad 576E at Vandenberg Air Force Base. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 2)
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