EUROPE’S FINAL ATV CARGO VEHICLE UNDOCKS FROM ISS - Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5, the Georges Lemaitre) has departed from the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday morning, ahead of a destructive re-entry on Sunday. The End Of Mission (EOM) events will complete the final ISS mission for the European cargo ship, although its spirit will live on with NASA’s Orion spacecraft program.The ATV-5 was launched on July 29, 2014 – atop an Ariane ES booster from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. ATV-5 proved to be the heaviest passenger ever to ride on the Ariane rocket. More (Source: NASASpaceFlight - Feb 14)
ISRO TO LAUNCH ITS FIRST US SATELLITE, FOR STARTUP SKYBOX - The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will launch its first American satellite later this year or early next year. This is from the company Skybox Imaging, which was bought by Google after it signed the contract with Isro. Skybox is planning to launch a series of satellites from other places for highresolution imaging. Google reportedly has big plans to enter the space industry, and is planning a constellation of 180 satellites in low earth orbit, which will provide Internet access throughout the world. According to earlier reports, the cost of this constellation will be somewhere between $1 billion and $3 billion. Isro signed the deal with Skybox in April 2014. More (Source: Economic Times - Feb 14)
EUROPE'S FINAL ATV CARGO SHIP LEAVES SPACE STATION SATURDAY: WATCH LIVE - An unmanned European space ship as big as a double-decker bus will leave the International Space Station tomorrow, signaling the end of a line of cargo ships that had delivered supplies to astronauts since 2008. Packed with astronaut trash, the European Space Agency's (ESA) fifth and last Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) will undock from the orbiting outpost Saturday morning (Feb. 14) at 8:41 a.m. EST. You can watch the undocking live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. The space agency's coverage will begin at 8:15 a.m. EST. [Europe's ATV-5 Space Cargo Ship Mission in Pictures] More (Source: Space.com - Feb 14)
VIRGIN GALACTIC UNVEILS MANUFACTURING FACILITY FOR ITS SATELLITE LAUNCHER - Virgin Galactic announced today that it has leased a new facility in Long Beach, California for the design and manufacture of its small satellite launcher, LauncherOne. The 150,000 square foot facility is intended to produce LauncherOne rockets “at quantity,” Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said in a statement. “With New Mexico’s magnificent Spaceport America for our commercial spaceflight operations, our Mojave facilities for WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo production, and now our new facility in Long Beach for LauncherOne, we are building capability to serve our expanding customer community.” More (Source: Forbes - Feb 13)
EUROPEAN CARGO SHIP LEAVING SPACE STATION SATURDAY, SKIPPING TEST BECAUSE OF FAILED POWER LINE - A European cargo ship is set to depart the International Space Station this weekend. But it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up the next day, skipping a special descent test because of a problem. One of four power lines failed last week on the trash-filled capsule. Engineers suspect a bad battery. The problem prompted the European Space Agency to cancel a shallow re-entry test that had been planned for the end of the month. Instead, the craft will re-enter normally Sunday over the Pacific. More (Source: U.S. News & World Report - Feb 13)
ESA EXPERIMENTAL SPACEPLANE COMPLETES RESEARCH FLIGHT - An experimental vehicle to develop an autonomous European reentry capability for future reusable space transportation has completed its mission. ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle flew a flawless reentry and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean just west of the Galapagos islands. The IXV spaceplane lifted off at 13:40 GMT (14:40 CET, 10:40 local time) on 11 February from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana atop a Vega rocket. More (Source: ESA - Feb 12)
SPACEX LAUNCHES SATELLITE BUT CALLS OFF ATTEMPT TO LAND ROCKET ON PLATFORM IN ATLANTIC - Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a research satellite into space Wednesday but called off a dramatic attempt to land the first stage of an unmanned rocket on a platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean because of extreme weather that caused massive waves. In a statement, the company said that the "drone ship," as it calls the floating platform, "was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather." But with waves "three stories high crashing over the decks," the attempt was not possible. More (Source: Washington Post - Feb 12)
VEGA ROCKET LAUNCHES IXV SPACEPLANE – MISSION COMPLETE - The European Space Agency is flying a reentry demonstration mission Wednesday with its Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV). Boosted by Europe’s lightweight Vega rocket, the IXV flew a suborbital mission culminating in landing and recovery in the Pacific Ocean after around 102 minutes of flight. Liftoff is occurred at 13:40 UTC from Kourou, French Guiana. The Intermediate Experimental Vehicle, or IXV, is a fully-automated technology demonstration spacecraft designed to build on earlier research into atmospheric reentry and serve as a stepping stone to a proposed reusable experimental vehicle. More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Feb 11)
DARPA TO BEGIN TESTING SATELLITE-LAUNCHING FIGHTER JET THIS YEAR - The United States military's ambitious plan to launch satellites from the belly of a fighter jet should get its first in-air test later this year. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aims to begin the flight-test phase of its Airborne Launch Assist Space Access program, or ALASA, with a demonstration run in late 2015. If all goes according to plan, a series of 12 orbital flights would then commence in early 2016 and wrap up by the middle of the year, DARPA officials said. "The plan right now is, we have 12 [orbital] launches. The first three are fundamentally engineering checkout payloads," Bradford Tousley, director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said Feb. 5 during a presentation at the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, D.C. More (Source: Space.com - Feb 11)
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