The United States Air Force AEHF4 payload was successfully launched on time this morning at 12:15AM Eastern from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on an Atlas V rocket. This launch marks the 131st mission for United Launch Alliance and their 50th launch for the Air Force. It’s the 79th Atlas V rocket launch and the […]
Here we have an interesting clip of the initial launch and ascent of the failed Soyuz MS-10 launch on Thursday, October 11th. This footage looks to have been taken from a drone flying a few hundred feet away, and is indeed good quality, albeit still a “from the ground” view. The video seems to end […]
We’ve got another awesome Atlas V launch tonight; this time an Atlas 551 configuration, one of the most powerful variations available of the Atlas V with 5 solid rocket boosters, will be launching the fourth satellite in the Advanced Extremely High Frequency series for the U.S. Air Force. This is a slightly different launch, in that […]
Yep. The little vacation is done. I’ve actually been back since Friday but I wanted to take some time and hang out more with my friend who I went on the trip with and who was only in town as a part of his own vacation and also took Sunday to just try to rest […]
This is a fun one. At the time this is publishing and I’d hope many are reading this article, I’m on my way with a friend to Huntsville, Alabama, to pay a visit to the U.S. Space And Rocket Center! I’ve not been there since 5th grade, which was early 1996 and while I know […]
This is it. 50 years ago today on October 11th, 1968 the manned portion of the Apollo Program began with the launch of Apollo 7, a mission designed to test the newly redesigned Apollo Command / Service Module in Earth orbit with an actual crew for up to 2 weeks – the estimated length of […]
I certainly wasn’t expecting to wake up to this bit of news, but it’s a statistical probability – this morning Soyuz MS-10 launch ended about 2 minutes into flight with an abort after some kind of anomaly with the Soyuz booster. As of right now, the news is spotty, but the good news is the […]
In what I think is going to become a trend here, it’s time to share a video of the rollout of Soyuz MS-10 to its launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a vehicle set to launch just a few hours from now as I write this entry. I’ve mentioned before that I love the […]
It’s not often I get to bring up an old, terrible meme in the title of an article, but I felt this one was right for this topic, which is a pretty awesome one – back on October 5th it was annoucned that a moon orbiting a planet outside of our solar system – an […]
October 4th marked not only the 61st anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, but also marked the return to Earth of the Soyuz MS-08 mission and its crew from their 6 month stay at the International Space Station. I normaly don’t cover landings but sometimes I feel it worth sharing thanks to the relatively good […]
Here we have an awesome little video that Arianespace produced for the 100th launch of the Ariane 5 – Flight VA243 – showing some awesome views of engine ignition and lift off. I never get tired of seeing this kind of detailed footage of these launches, of the raw power of these machines as they […]
October 4th is one of my favorite days of the year for one awesome reason – it’s the day in 1958 where the Soviet Union successfully orbited the worlds first satellite – Sputnik 1. The first in a string of amazing achievements for humanity (not just on a national level) and our first steps out […]
This morning the Parker Solar Probe made a flyby of the planet Venus as a part of its path to the Sun. The Parker Solar Probe is using the gravity of Venus to slow it down in such a way as to take it closer to the Sun on each successive orbit, eventually bringing it […]
The next stage in the Hayabusa2 mission occurred this morning with the release and successful landing of the MASCOT rover on the asteroid Ryugu. This comes as a part of the same mission which brought us the first photos from the surface of an asteroid and will culminate with a sample return from Ryugu in […]
Coming right on the heels of NASA’s 60th anniversary of operations comes a finding that comes as a direct result of funding by NASA through Planetary Astronomy grant NNX15AF44G – the announcement of another dwarf planet orbiting the Sun! Now, these dwarf planets are nothing new. The most famous of which is, of course, Pluto, […]