The Space Shuttle wasn’t just the NASA follow up to Apollo – oh no, it was intended to replace all expendable launch vehicles, both those in use by NASA for civilian payloads and military launches. The specifications of the payload bay and the overall design of the shuttle were driven by military payload requirements, namely […]
Last night Cassini made it’s first plunge into the space between Saturn and its rings. Following several hours out of contact with Earth (due to the planet blocking signals), the probe emerged unscathed and provided us closer than ever views of the upper atmosphere of the ringed gas giant! The gap between Saturn and its […]
As I mentioned in the previous articles about the Cygnus CRS-7 launch, this launch was one of the recent ones recorded using 360 degree cameras. One of the few “trendy” things I actually like, these allow you a somewhat “like you’re really there” experience without requiring expensive virtual reality gear, and without ruining the video […]
The Soyuz 1 mission, which I discussed in great detail yesterday, flew, amazingly, for just about 24 hours – it was a day after launch that Komarov finally made his landing attempt, which of course as we know ended in disaster, on April 24th. Something I forgot to mention is, had everything gone perfectly with […]
On April 23rd, 1967, the Soviet Union launched the first manned mission of their new Soyuz program. The Soviets had not launched a crew in 2 years, realizing that to get anywhere close to beating the Americans at a race to the moon they would need to produce a new spacecraft that could conduct a […]
China’s space program is moving along nicely – on the 20th we had the launch of the Tianzhou 1 cargo craft, it successfully docking with their Tiangong-2 space station today, the 22nd. This launch not only marks China’s first automated docking and first flight of their future space station resupply vehicle, but also, thanks to […]
As I mentioned yesterday, here we have the launch replays of the Soyuz MS-04 Mission. The mission successfully docked to the ISS 6 hours after launch on April 20th, delivering its 2 person crew to the space station. Not much commentary for this one – It’s just some good views of a very nice Soyuz […]
It was about 7PM Central time on April 20th, 1972 that Apollo 16 crew members John Young and Charlie Duke landed in the Descartes plains as part of the Apollo 16 mission. This video explains the general process of the Apollo Lunar Module actually landing on the moon, and contains video and audio of the […]
This is the NASA live video of the 360 degree launch of Cygnus CRS OA-7 on Atlas V. Now, this was touted as “the words first 360 degree filmed launch” but that’s not entirely true. United Launch Alliance, the company that produces Atlas V and conducted this launch, has filmed some of their launches using […]
Yet another rocket launch to cover is the early morning (local time) launch of the Soyuz MS-04 behicle to the International Space Station. After a 6 hour flight, the 2 person crew of Fyodor Yurchikhin, and (on his first space flight) Jack D. Fischer successfully docked to the International Space Station. This mission has a […]
Yesterday morning an Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a mission to resupply the International Space Station. The Cygnus Resupply Vehicle, named the SS John Glenn, is carrying over 3,000 kilograms of cargo to the Space Station as part of Orbital Sciences contract with NASA to provide commercial cargo transportation […]
45 years ago today, on April 16th, 1972, Apollo 16, the penultimate mission of the Apollo Lunar Program, launched, carrying John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charles Duke on a mission to land at Descartes Highlands and learn more about the geology of the lunar highlands, a part of the Moons lithograph that had not been […]
Amazingly, I don’t have much to share today on Vostok 1. I covered most everything I could possibly need to cover on the mission last year, and, suffice it to say, there amazingly isn’t that much video or special content out there on this mission – at least, nothing I’m quite feeling like sharing at […]
Last year I covered the launch of STS-1, the first flight of the Space Shuttle Program, with a more in-depth article which you can find in the link below. Today, I thought it would be better to share just a fragment of that historic, albeit somewhat forgotten mission, by focusing on the launch of the […]
The ill-fated Apollo 13 missions launched on this day, April 11th, 47 years ago today in the year 1970. The mission was famously portrayed in the 1995 film Apollo 13 which, while somewhat inaccurate on many elements, and slightly altered for the sake of drama, still told the story well enough for most people to […]