Back on the 7th of June (the 8th of June in Russia) the legendary Proton-M rocket made its first launch of 2017. This powerful booster hasn’t been launched in just shy of a year thanks to some manufacturing issues which would have put a launch into jeopardy; it looks like those issues have been solved. […]
On June 5th, 2017, The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launched a payload on their most powerful rocket booster ever, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MK3. As the name suggessts, this is a booster designed to launch satellites into Geosynchronous orbits (orbit’s that stay in position over a particular spot of the planet) or, […]
On June 3rd, 2017, yet another Falcon 9 booster launched from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, this time carrying the 11th SpaceX Commercial Resupply mission to the International Space Station. This mission is noteworthy for 2 reasons: This is the 100th launch from LC-39A, which was first used for the Apollo 4 Saturn V launch […]
While I’m quite apt to cover launches of missions to the International Space Station, I often times don’t address the fact that 6 months later the Space Station crews return home in the Soyuz craft that took them up there to begin with. Today, the crew of Expedition 51, Peggy Whitson, Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas […]
Getting back to the grind, we might as well start with this video, uploaded today , which is a digital conversion of a 1966 film about the process of filming and photographing rocket launches at Vandernberg Air Force Base. Launches from VAFB were more common than launches from the Eastern Test Range and Cape Canaveral […]
On May 18th, 1969, John Young, Tom Stafford, and Gene Cernan began an 8 day mission that would act as a “dress rehearsal” for the planned manned landing on the Moon of Apollo 11. This flight was the 2nd of 4 that would be launched in 1969, and would serve to test the Lunar Module […]
Yesterday evening SpaceX launched Inmarsat-5 F4, the heaviest payload yet flown on a Falcon 9. Inmarsat-5 is yet another communications satellite, this one intended to provide increased network connectivity over Europe (to put it extremely simply). The vehicle was a Falcon 9 full thrust, and due to the record weight of the payload (for Falcon […]
On November 12th, 1981, the Space Shuttle Columbia was launched on the second flight of the Space Shuttle Program, a flight which also marks the first re-use of a crewed spacecraft – one of the key goals of the Shuttle Program. STS-2 marked the first use of the Remote Manipulator Arm (the “Canadarm”) , and […]
Here we have a quick, 5 minute film clip from 1966, produced by NASA to provide a status update on the Apollo Program. In 1966, as you may recall, we were finishing up the Gemini Program, and the Saturn V rocket was nearing testing completion for it’s first flight, in late 1967, as a test […]
This video from JPL and NASA shows what the “sound” of the space below the rings of Saturn is like – more correctly, what the particle and magnetic sensors on the craft detect, indicating the vastly different environments outside and inside the ring zones around the gas giant. Again, this is what happens when you […]
I’ve been delayed on sharing this, but hey, better late than never. This video clip from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, as you may have seen it listed before) and shows the path Cassini took over Saturn during the first dive of the Grand Final. The clip speaks for itself, really, showing the cloud tops […]
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 […]
I’ve made a pretty big mistake in my article yesterday about the Falcon 9 launch of NROL-76. This is the fact that they used high-end cameras and telescope systems to track the booster for it’s entire flight and return to land. http://www.xadara.com/nrol-76-successfully-flies-on-a-falcon-9-rocket/ Seriously, re-watch the footage: aside from a few sections to show the on-booster […]
After a day long delay, the classified U.S. Military payload known as NROL-76 was launched this morning, not on a Delta IV or an Atlas V booster, but on a SpaceX Falcon 9! It’s an incredibly standard launch from LC-39A, but being a military payload, the livestream of the event focused on liftoff and the […]
45 years ago this past month, from April 16th to April 27th of 1972, the Apollo 16 mission went to, and returned from, the Moon on our 5th successful lunar landing mission. This film goes over the mission in detail, going over key points of the mission and the unique events that happened during the […]