Following up on last nights awesome launch of the BepiColombo spacecraft on its mission to study Mercury, I thought it only fitting to share the launch highlights video on the beginning of the mission – the launch of Arianespace VA245! These videos are similar to the ones United Launch Alliance puts out for their launches, […]
Mercury isn’t a very well understood planet, and up until relatively recently, it was considered a boring, dead world not worth focusing on. All this changed with NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft and its amazing mission to Mercury discovered evidence of water ice on the incredibly hot planet. BepiColombo is a joint ESA and JAXA mission to […]
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 […]
September 30th, 2018 marked 1 year since the end of the Rosetta mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). As a part of this anniversary, the European Space Agency produced this video title “Rosetta: The Story Continues” which takes a look into some of the discoveries already made about the nature of comets, and speculation of the […]
The Ariane 5 launch vehicle made its 100th flight yesterday, September 25th, carrying 2 communications satellites (Horizons-3e and Azerspace-2/Intelsat 38) successfully into their respective geosynchronous orbits high above the Earth. Ariane 5 is another one of those rocket systems that could be described as a workhorse – it’s an incredibly capable booster in the European […]
This morning marked the final launch of the “Evolution Storable” or ES variant of the amazing Ariane 5 rocket. Without going into great detail on the history of the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and its variants, the “ES” variant combines an improved core stage of the still-flying ECA variant with the older storable propellant second […]
Here we have a rather beautiful video the European Space Agency published today, showing a montage of the final images from the Rosetta mission, an orbiter – lander combination which operated on / around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for 12 years, from 2004 to 2016. These images are from the ending of the mission as Rosetta began […]
Today marks an amazing 28 years since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the premier tools in our study of the origins of the universe. Orbiting the Earth well above the light altering effects of the bulk of the atmosphere, Hubble was placed in a unique position to spend days, weeks, months, […]
Coming a week after the launch of a Minotaur-C, we have the launch of a very similar looking booster – the European Space Agencies Vega rocket, this time carrying the Mohammed VI-A satellite for the Kingdom of Morocco. This booster, of course, launched from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. At first glance, one […]
Nearly a month after a launch abort on September 5th (caused by an electrical failure in a Solid Rocket Booster, which was discovered following main engine ignition) an Ariane-5 rocket carrying 2 American communication satellites lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana yesterday. Ariane-5 is the European Space Agencies heavy booster of choice, and although it […]
Yesterday evening, from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, an Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched 2 large communications satellites into orbit, one for Brazil and another for South Korea. Ariane 5 is the European Space Agencies heavy booster, using 2 solid rocket motors for the bulk of liftoff thrust, and a core engine burning Hydrogen […]
The European Space Agencies Rosetta mission ended today, September 30th, with the crash landing of the Rosetta spacecraft on comet 67P, its primary target over its 12 year mission. Even though its original launch was delayed resulting in a change of target, and its secondary payload, the Philae lander, had a much shorter mission than […]