Today, September 22nd, 2017, the OSIRIS-REx mission passed by the planet Earth, just a little over a year since its launch, for a gravity assisted trajectory change to send it on its way to its target, the asteroid Bennu. Gravity assists are used often in missions as a method of fuel conservation. Traveling around the […]
I was fortunate enough to be able to experience a majority of the solar eclipse yesterday with only one issue – clouds. Yes, as is typical for this area, the time I need the skies clear it goes from mostly clear to storms rolling by, all while the eclipse was happening! Just my luck, right? […]
It’s the 4th of July tomorrow and, being quite honest, I had nothing quite planned to write today or tomorrow. However, to keep up with the spirit of Xadara, my love of space, and in a classic “Happy Birthday America” bit of patriotism, I’ve decided to just flood you with some random rocket launches in […]
For the first time in nearly 2 years, an Antares rocket launched from the launch facilities on Wallops Island, Virginia, carrying a Cygnus cargo craft to the International Space Station. While a pretty straightforward launch of a somewhat plain seeming booster, this launch was a critical moment for Orbital ATK, creators of Cygnus and Antares, […]
Very early today, at around 7:30 in the morning Beijing time, China launched its Shenzhou 11 mission to its new Tiangong 2 space station. Tiangong 2, which was launch September 15th of 2016, can support the manned mission for around 30 days, or so reports say. Shenzhou is a spacecaft very similar to the Soviet […]
No, I still can’t get past the insanity a few weeks ago on YouTube when I brought up the fact that the SpaceX booster has a large number of engines, and that increases the chance for something to go catastrophically wrong. To recap, not only did people get mad at me over even daring to […]
Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager 1 and 2 probes were sent out on missions to observe Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, as well as their moons, rings, and anything else they could discover on their journeys out of the solar system. Voyager 1 was sent on a more specialized mission for only Jupiter and […]
When the United States Air Force began its space reconnaissance programs in the 1960’s, it needed a way to stabilize its camera and signal interception payloads on orbit. Under normal circumstances of the day, satellites were either spin stabilized, or left to drift along on their orbit, maybe, if things were working right, the satellite […]
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 […]
As is common post launch, United Launch Alliance has published a video compiling highlights and best views of the launch of AFSPC-6 on its Delta IV rocket. As is equally common for me, I present this video here for those of you who enjoy such, and don’t feel like sitting through the entire launch video […]
At 12:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time this morning, August 19th, a Delta IV booster carrying the twin AFSPC-6 satellites successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. These satellites are, as best i can tell, intended to monitor on orbit activities of other satellites and the like for the benefit […]
45 years ago today, Apollo 15 was deep in its mission.By the time it was all over, the crew had spent 4 days at the moon, conduction research from both orbit and from the surface, including the missions most famous moment where a falcon feather and a hammer were dropped in the effective vacuum of […]
45 Years ago today, Apollo 15 Landed at Hadley Rille on the Moon. The Crew of this J class mission, David Scott, Al Worden, and James Irwin, would spend 3 days both in orbit and on the surface studying the moon, which was, of course, the true scientific goal of the Apollo program – to […]
Two and a half months after the flight of Freedom 7, NASA was ready for another Mercury – Redstone test flight. The pilot for this flight was Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom, a Korean War Veteran from the United States Air Force. This flight was to be a duplicate of Shepards Freedom 7 flight, testing out […]
Today, July 20th, 2016, marks 47 years since Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. It’s an event that everyone knows of, but, as historically significant as it was, was just a test flight – the later Apollo landings were the real missions of science and exploration that Apollo was born to execute, but 11, that […]