40 years ago, the twin Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were just starting on their historic journeys to the outer solar system. Voyager 1 destined to visit Saturn and Jupiter, Voyager 2 destined to not only study those planets, but also to be the first, and still only probe to fly by Uranus and […]
So, as I’ve hinted to recently, I’m long overdue on finishing up a rather, shall we say, intense set of articles regarding SpaceX. More correctly, these articles regard the attitude the SpaceX fan base exudes, which is heavily rooted in the way SpaceX pushes itself to the public – a hype culture the company feeds […]
Update 6-23-2018: The original upload channel has been deleted. This article has been replaced by a new one for the 45th anniversary of the Skylab 2 mission here: http://www.xadara.com/skylab-the-first-40-days/ Switching gears just a bit back to space, we have this nice little film from the mid 70’s regarding the first manned Skylab mission. Skylab was […]
Time to go back to the early days of the Space Shuttle program. 1980, in this case, when the first flight was still in the middle of a variety of delays. The Space Shuttle was basically ready, but as luck would have it one thing after another kept the vehicle grounded until April 12th, 1981, […]
Last week marked the penultimate launch of the Delta II rocket, carrying the JPSS-1 satellite into a polar orbit to help with weather research and forecasting here in the United States. Today I bring you a pair of videos – the first is the launch highlights clip, produced by United Launch Alliance, showing clips of […]
I’m glad I stayed up for this one – early this morning, 1:47 Pacific Time (3:47 Central Time for me) marked the launch of the NASA / NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System 1, or JPSS-1, weather satellite. As the name implies, JPSS-1 is the first of a new set of polar orbiting weather satellites which […]
Early this morning (incidentally, at the same time as a planned, but scrubbed, Delta II launch) the Cygnus cargo vehicle SS Gene Cernan, which was launched on Sunday, arrived at the International Space Station and was successfully berthed to the Station This differs from docking in that Cygnus doesn’t attach itself to the Space Station, […]
On Sunday morning an Orbital ATK Antares booster launched from pad 0 at Wallops Island, Virginia, carrying the SS Gene Cernan, a Cygnus cargo vehicle carrying 3 tons of supplies, to orbit for a resupply mission to the International Space Station. This mission marks the 8th resupply mission by Orbital ATK under NASA’s Commercial Resupply […]
In doing my usual space news perusing yesterday I came across news that a SpaceX Merlin engine had “exploded” on the test stand. As it would turn out, the engine didn’t explode, but what did happen is still interesting enough to discuss here. The article also shared a bit of new information with me that […]
I wrote earlier that today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 4 – the first flight of the Saturn V rocket. This mission was designed to both test the entire Saturn V, but also the Apollo Command Module. Previous Article – 50 Years Ago, The Launch Of Apollo 4 – The First […]
At 7:00 AM Eastern Time on November 9th, 1967, 5 F-1 rocket engines, each one alone producing 1 and a half million lbs of thrust, roared to life, beginning the first flight of the most powerful machine ever built by humanity – the Saturn V rocket. The Saturn V was the machine that, if everything […]
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 […]
Today, November 3rd 2017 marks 60 years since the launch of Sputnik 2, the second satellite to orbit the Earth. Sputnik 2 was quite different from Sputnik 1, though, and not just in that it was much heavier – while Sputnik 1 just flew around and beeped, day in, day out, for about 3 week, […]
Yesterday, October 31st, marked the return to flight of the Taurus booster after having been upgraded and renamed the Minotaur-C. Minotaur-C is one of those rather unique boosters that a vast majority of people know nothing about. In the original Taurus designation, it made 9 flights between 1994 and 2011, 3 of those resulting in […]