2015 – Page 55 – Spaceflight Now

OTD…June 2 and STS-91

June 2, 2015 Justin Ray

#OTD in 1998…The launch of Discovery on final shuttle-Mir docking mission

Launch of U.S.-French oceanography satellite postponed

June 2, 2015 Stephen Clark

The launch of a U.S.-French oceanography satellite from California has been postponed from July 22 after engineers discovered contamination in one of the spacecraft’s thrusters at its factory in France.

Progress failure probe points to linkage with Soyuz rocket

June 2, 2015 Stephen Clark

Russia says a design bug from the pairing of a Progress spacecraft with an upgraded version of the venerable Soyuz launcher led to the loss of a resupply mission bound for the International Space Station on April 28.

RD-181 engines prepared for shipment to U.S.

June 1, 2015 Stephen Clark

The first pair of RD-181 rocket engines set to launch on Orbital ATK’s redesigned Antares rocket are in the final stages of acceptance testing in Russia ahead of their export to the United States in early July, officials said.

Roscosmos: Design flaw brought down Proton rocket

June 1, 2015 Stephen Clark

Russia has blamed a design flaw in the Proton rocket’s third stage that went undetected for decades as the cause of a May 16 launch failure.

LightSail deployment set for this week

June 1, 2015 Stephen Clark

The Planetary Society’s LightSail spacecraft is back in contact with ground controllers after nine days of radio silence triggered by a suspected software glitch, and engineers plan to send the command to unfurl the tiny satellite’s solar sail as soon as Wednesday.

Tour comet 67P in Rosetta’s latest image release

May 31, 2015 Stephen Clark

The latest batch of images released from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission shows the brutal gray landscape of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in vivid detail.

U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame welcomes 2015 class

May 30, 2015 Spaceflight Now

A proud “Hubble Hugger,” the final commander of shuttle Discovery, the first person to fly a docking to the International Space Station and one of the first U.S. women to join the astronaut ranks were inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame on Saturday.

Dashcam video records dazzling Soyuz docking

May 28, 2015 Stephen Clark

A video camera mounted inside a Russian Soyuz capsule captured stunning views of the docking of a U.S.-Russian crew to the International Space Station in March, supplying a spectacular visual of a cosmic ballet occurring 250 miles above Earth.

Boeing gets first order for commercial crew mission

May 28, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA has placed an order with Boeing for the first operational mission to ferry a crew to the International Space Station in a new era of commercial human spaceflight.