The Antares rocket launch, scheduled on April 17 at 20:00 GMT from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, was cancelled due to a Ground Support Equipment issue during the countdown. The clocks had to be stopped at T-12 minutes when a power umbilical line to the second stage came loose from the vehicle prematurely, forcing the team to scrub the launch. Following [...]
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Antares Rolled Out for April 17 Flight Test
Orbital Sciences Corporation has confirmed that the Antares rocket test flight will commence on April 17. In the meantime, the first fully-integrated Antares was rolled out from its assembly at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), on April 6. “With the completion of the Antares roll out today,” said Mr. Michael Pinkston, Orbital’s Antares Program Manager, “we are on a clear [...]
At SXSW SpaceX and DIYROCKETS Presented Future of Rockets
At the South by Southwest Interactive festival (SXSW), SpaceX CEO Elon Musk showed a recent video of the experimental rocket Grasshopper. At the same event, DIYROCKETS and Sunglass announced a partnership to launch the world’s first competition to create 3D printed rocket engines through collaborative design. Musk showed the progress of Grasshopper, a reusable rocket that, when completed, will propel [...]
Soyuz 2.1a Succesfully Delivers 6 Globalstar Satellites Into Orbit
The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has announced that a Soyuz-2.1a has successfully lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying 6 Globalstar-2 low-orbit communication satellites, on February 6. The launch was originally intended for February 5, but it was postponed due to high winds occurring at an altitude of 8 to 10 km. This is the first launch of 2013 from [...]
Zenit Launch with Intelsat 27 Ends in Ocean
At 06:56 GMT on Friday, February 1, a Zenit-3SL rocket lifted off from Sea Launch’s platform in the Pacific Ocean, carrying the 6215 kg Intelsat 27. Forty seconds later, the rocket and its payload had crashed into the water. “We are very disappointed with the outcome of the launch and offer our sincere regrets to our customer, Intelsat, and their [...]
Kazakhstan Reduces Proton Launches From Baikonour
Kazakhstan has approved only 12 Proton launches from the Baikonour space launch facility in 2013, instead of the 17 originally planned by Russia. Baikonour, which is the Russian main launch site, is currently at the center of a heated political discourse. The tension between Russia and Kazakhstan has grown in the last few months, since Taglat Musarbayev, head of Kazakh [...]
NASA Approves Next Falcon 9 Mission Following October Anomaly
NASA feels certain of SpaceX’s capacity to safely deliver another supply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) on March 1 from Cape Canaveral, although the joint investigation into Falcon 9’s rocket engine malfunction is still open. Mike Suffredini, NASA’s ISS program manager, reported that the rocket engines are now “good to go” during a press conference on ISS status [...]
Roscosmos Approves Report On Breeze-M Anomaly
The management of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has reviewed and approved the report provided by the commission investigating the Proton launch anomaly which occurred during the Yamal-402 mission on December 9, 2012. The Russian working group assembled by Roscosmos included independent experts from TsNIIMash, the Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building, and the Keldysh Research Center, the [...]
New ESA Safety Standard Now Available
The European Space Agency (ESA) has just issued Safety System Engineering: Safety Technical Requirements for Human Rated Space Systems, a new human spaceflight standard. Chapter 1 describes the scope of the document: This document establishes the requirements applicable to the development and operations of human‐rated space systems for ESA human spaceflight missions. These requirements are intended to protect the public, the ground [...]
South Korean Launch Postponed Mid-Countdown
On November 29, South Korea was scheduled to make its third attempt to put its first satellite in orbit. The launch, which was already postponed from October 26, will likely not take place until the spring of 2013. “During the countdown we found an electronic signal problem with the thrust vector controller in the second stage and decided a launch will be [...]
