The paralells between the American and Soviet space programs in 1967 to 1968 are quite strange. On January 27th 1967 America had the Apollo 1 Fire which resulted in the delay of the first manned flight of Apollo until October 1968 and the Apollo 7 Mission. The Soviet Union had a similarly bad situation with […]
Here we have a more “traditional” film regarding the flight of Apollo 7 – the typical official NASA Film covering the mission in concise detail, and what detail it is. The launch footage shown in this film is outstanding – an incredible close up of the Saturn IB booster as it lifts off of the […]
Here we have quite the interesting little bit of space history – the pilot of a series which was intended to follow every Apollo mission, but was cut short due to the perception of a “conflict of interests” between sponsors of the program itself and the television studio behinc it, KCET out of Los Angeles. […]
On October 22nd, 1968 the Apollo 7 command module carrying Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, bringing an end to the first manned Apollo mission, and bringing confidence back to the nations space program, and our efforts to make it to the Moon before the end of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Haven’t we been down this road before? Didn’t I already do a 60th Birthday post for NASA earlier this year? Yes, yes I did. However, that post was for the July 29th, 1958 formation of NASA as an agency, the signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. In the 2 months following that date in 1958, […]
Last week Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe successfully delivered the first of 3 sets of rovers to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, proving us the first photos from the surface of an asteroid. Hayabusa 2 is one of those many current space mission which I’ve simply never covered. It flew “under the radar” so to […]
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 […]