LAST-SECOND LAUNCH ABORT GROUNDS TWO U.S.-BUILT COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES - An Ariane 5 countdown in French Guiana was aborted Tuesday with the European-made rocket’s main engine already running, postponing the launch of two commercial communications satellites until engineers can resolve the problem. The rare last-second abort came at 2151 GMT (5:51 p.m. EDT; 6:51 p.m. French Guiana time) Tuesday as the Ariane 5’s Vulcain 2 main engine, a cryogenic powerplant consuming super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, throttled up to full power.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 6)

THIS SPACECRAFT IS THINNER THAN A HUMAN HAIR AND CAN CAPTURE SPACE DEBRIS - Last year, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A satellite collided with a tiny chunk of debris. Fortunately, the resulting damage to its solar panel turned out to be minor. But it got lucky. If the piece of space trash had been slightly larger, it could have shattered the entire panel, according to Holger Krag, head of the agency’s Space Debris Office who spoke about the incident at this past spring's 7th European Conference on Space Debris. Earth’s orbit is littered with bolts, flecks of paint, dead satellites, and other leftovers from past missions.   More
(Source: Popular Science - Sep 6)

SPACEX TO LAUNCH SHARED ECHOSTAR, SES SATELLITE IN OCTOBER - SpaceX intends to launch EchoStar-105/SES-11 on a partially reused Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than October, the company said Aug. 31. The mission will be SpaceX’s third launch to use a previously flown Falcon 9 booster. The first was the March launch of SES-10 followed by the June launch of BulgariaSat-1. Luxembourg-based SES and EchoStar of Englewood, Colorado, ordered the satellite from Airbus Defence and Space in August 2014 as a replacement for AMC-15, which is now 13 years old. EchoStar will lease the Ku-band payload on SES-11, rebranding it as EchoStar-105. Both satellite operators originally anticipated the spacecraft launching in late 2016, but SpaceX’s September 2016 Falcon 9 explosion set the mission back about a year.    More
(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 5)

NASA'S ASTEROID-BOUND SPACECRAFT TO SLINGSHOT PAST EARTH - NASA's asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer), will pass about 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) above Earth just before 12:52 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 22. Using Earth as a slingshot, the spacecraft will receive an assist to complete its journey to the asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx is undertaking a challenging mission to visit the near-Earth asteroid, survey the surface, collect samples and deliver them safely back to Earth.    More
(Source: Space Daily - Sep 4)

VIETNAM AIMS TO DESIGN AND LAUNCH SATELLITE - Pham Anh Tuan, general director of the Vietnam Space Center said at a technical handover ceremony at Nha Trang Observatory that Vietnam is going to launch satellites designed and made by Vietnamese. According to Nguyen Duc Cuong, chair of the Vietnam Aerospace Association, there are two kinds of satellites Vietnam needs to launch – geostationary telecommunication satellite (aerial stations to relay telecommunications) and remote sensing satellites (that serve weather forecasting and environmental monitoring).   More
(Source: VietNamNet Bridge - Sep 4)

SOYUZ MS-04 LANDS AS PEGGY WHITSON ENDS RECORD-BREAKING MISSION - After four and a half months in space, Roscosmos’ Soyuz MS-04 returned three spaceflight veterans to Earth – including one who has been on orbit far longer than the craft itself. Landing on the Kazakh steppes at 07:22 local time in Kazakhstan on Sunday, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson concluded an unplanned 288 day mission aboard the International Space Station, a mission which has seen her shatter records and accumulate a NASA-unparalleled 665 days in space.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Sep 3)

HOW NASA KEPT THE ISS FLYING WHILE HARVEY HIT MISSION CONTROL - In the days before Harvey hit Texas, flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center outside of Houston had a decision to make: should they evacuate or ride out the storm at the agency’s Mission Control Center? The dilemma wasn’t just about the safety of the flight controllers. These personnel are tasked with flying the International Space Station — a round-the-clock job that can’t be done just anywhere. If there’s a gap in ground communication, it could put the astronauts in danger. “It’s 100 percent the flight controllers on the ground flying the space station,” Zebulon Scoville, NASA’s lead flight director of Expedition 52 for the International Space Station, tells The Verge. “If that capability is lost, then that can be a risk to the mission.”   More
(Source: The Verge - Sep 2)

PSLV LAUNCH OF NAVIGATION SATELLITE FAILS - An Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) failed to place a navigation satellite into its planned orbit Aug. 31 when the rocket’s payload fairing failed to deploy. The PSLV, flying a mission designated PSLV-C39, lifted off on schedule at 9:30 a.m. Eastern from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India. Initial phases of the launch appeared to go as planned, but observers noted that, as the flight progressed, the vehicle appeared to deviate from its planned trajectory according to telemetry displays shown during the webcast.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 1)

IT LOOKS LIKE YET ANOTHER SATELLITE IS BREAKING APART AT GEO - On August 26, the Indonesia based, state-owned satellite operator PT Telkom disclosed an "anomaly" in the pointing of its satellite in geostationary orbit. Company officials said that although they and contractor Lockheed Martin expected to restore service to the satellite, they were moving customers to another satellite as a precautionary measure. However, new evidence gathered by a US-based firm that tracks objects in geostationary orbit, ExoAnalytic Solutions, suggests the satellite may be falling apart.    More
(Source: Ars Technica - Sep 1)

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