The identical twin to Voyager 2, Voyager 1, was launched on September 5th 1977. While launched after Voyager 2, it was launched with a more direct trajectory and as a result quickly moved ahead to reach Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980 with its last major flyby being Saturn’s moon Titan. Voyager 1 would […]
A key theme that seems to exist in the mind of every member of the “Cult of SpaceX” is this presumption that SpaceX is somehow perfect – that nothing ever goes wrong when SpaceX is involved! Even if this isn’t literally what is thought, the attitude presented exudes such an idea. SpaceX isn’t perfect. No […]
In this video from NASA we have the flight path that Voyager 2 took through the Solar System during it’s mission, which is still going 40 years after launch! It’s a very straightforward video, no sound or anything special. It starts just a few days before August 20th, 1977, the launch day of Voyager 2 […]
Now for something actually somewhat exciting to me, the onboard footage of the Atlas V TDRS-M launch from a few days ago. This is exactly what it sounds like, the view from the booster of the launch, including staging, ignition of the Centaur stage RL-10 engine, and the payload deployment. It’s straightforward, just the way […]
Another SpaceX launch, this time of the Taiwanese Earth-Observation satellite Formosat-5. This was one of the lightest payloads ever launched on a Falcon 9 at only about 475 kilograms, are just over 1000 lbs. Most Falcon 9 payloads tend to be in the 3,000-7,000 kilogram weight range, with one going so far as 9,000 kilograms […]
I’m almost a week late on this one, but it’s still worth covering: The third, and final of the 3 Third-Generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, known as TDRS, was successfully launched on Friday, August 18th, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 41. The TDRS satellite system is used for high-bandwith data and […]
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? […]
On August 20th, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched on the most powerful launch vehicle available at the time, the Titan IIIE, on a mission to explore all 4 of the gas giant outer planets, and onward to deep space. Voyager 2 was, oddly, the first of the 2 Voyager probes launched – Voyager 1 was […]
The Voyager space probes, the furthest man-made objects from Earth, were launched 40 years ago this upcoming week (in the case of Voyaged 2, launched August 20th 1977 – Voyager 1 was launched later, in September of 77), and as such NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are doing a bit of a celebration, to […]
Today marked another Falcon 9 launch, carrying a Dragon cargo spacecraft on a resupply mission to the International, Space Station. As usual, it was a nominal launch with a successful first stage landing, and successful insertion into orbit of the Dragon spacecraft which should be getting to the Space Station about the time I publish […]
It looks like SpaceX has, as the title states, built the final Dragon V1 capsule, in preparations to get to production of the Dragon V2 capsule going – this is the vehicle that will be crew-capable. So, this means that SpaceX wil be re-flying their Dragon capsules for the foreseeable future, as their role as […]
In what seems so far to be a flawless mission, Soyuz MS-05 made a successful docking with the Rassvet module of the International Space Station slightly ahead of schedule, a little before 6 hours after its launch on the 28th. The images of the docking are quite beautiful – the below video shows views from […]
The next crew to the International Space Station launched today on Soyuz MS-05. It was early morning here in the US but late evening at Baikonour; this created lighting conditions that allowed for some of the most beautiful Soyuz launch footage I have ever seen! It’s well worth checking the footage out since it so […]
48 years ago today on July 24th, 1969, Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific ocean after successfully landing on the Moon. This completed the nations commitment to “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” before the end of the decade, and showed to the world that our combined […]