Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket under the wing of the company’s Boeing 747 carrier jet at Mojave Air and Space Port. Credit: Virgin Orbit On the heels of its first successful orbital launch in January, Virgin Orbit is gearing up for its first operational mission Wednesday with a flight of its air-launched rocket off the coast …
Virgin Orbit planning to launch seven small satellites Wednesday Read More »
EDITOR’S NOTE: NASA TV’s live launch coverage in English begins at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). The Roscosmos webcast in Russian begins at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT). NASA TV Roscosmos Webcast A Russian Progress supply ship is set to launch Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, commencing a two-day chase of the International Space …
Russia gears up to launch space station resupply ship Read More »
EDITOR’S NOTE: NASA TV’s live coverage of the Cygnus spacecraft’s departure from the International Space Station begins at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT). A Cygnus spacecraft owned by Northrop Grumman will depart the International Space Station Tuesday, concluding a four-month mission that delivered more than 8,000 pounds of cargo. The automated resupply freighter will deploy five …
Cygnus supply ship ready to end four-month mission Read More »
Russia’s military launched the first of a new type of ship-locating radar imaging satellite Friday aboard a Soyuz rocket. The Russian Ministry of Defense said the Soyuz-2.1b rocket took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, located about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow, at 3:50 p.m. EDT (1950 GMT) Friday. Heading northeast from Plesetsk, the …
Russia launches military satellite for naval surveillance Read More »
Thomas Pesquet moves the new solar array to the P6 truss for installation. Image: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and NASA crewmate Shane Kimbrough floated back outside the International Space Station Friday and deployed a 60-foot-long roll-out solar array, the second of six new blankets being installed to upgrade the lab’s power system …
Spacewalking astronauts install second upgraded solar array Read More »
The Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter is lowered on top of the Space Launch System core stage inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux NASA has stacked the next piece of the agency’s first Space Launch System moon rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, adding an adapter structure to connect the …
Interstage adapter installed on Space Launch System Read More »
These photos show the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket June 17 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying a GPS navigation satellite into orbit for the U.S. Space Force. Once its job was complete, the rocket’s first stage booster returned to a landing on a SpaceX drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The …
Photos: SpaceX rocket launches, then lands, on Space Force mission Read More »
A Long March 2C rocket lifts off from the Xinhua launch base June 18. Credit: CASC China launched three more Yaogan 30 military reconnaissance satellites June 18 aboard a Long March 2C rocket. The launch of another triplet of Yaogan 30 satellites makes 27 similar spacecraft deployed on a series of Long March 2C rocket …
Chinese military payloads deployed on Long March 2C rocket launch Read More »
A Cold War-era missile motor cast with solid propellant in 1966 fired up for the first time Wednesday to catapult a Northrop Grumman Minotaur 1 rocket off a launch pad in Virginia with three small spacecraft for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency. The Minotaur 1 rocket uses two surplus stages taken from the U.S. …
Photos: Surplus missile motor from 1960s launches classified NRO satellites Read More »
Chinese astronaut Tang Hongbo (left), commander Nie Haisheng (center), and astronaut Liu Boming (right) inside the Tianhe core module of China’s space station. Credit: CCTV Three Chinese astronauts floated into the country’s new Tiangong space station Thursday, becoming the first people to board China’s outpost in orbit just nine hours after a successful launch from …
Chinese astronauts enter Tiangong space station for first time Read More »
