November 2015 – Page 5 – Spaceflight Now

Launch managers sign off on final Ariane 5 flight of 2015

November 7, 2015 Stephen Clark

A launch readiness review Friday cleared an Ariane 5 rocket for liftoff Tuesday with two communications satellites for Arabsat and India, the first three missions from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana scheduled in less than 40 days.

Spacewalkers reconfigure station cooling system

November 6, 2015 William Harwood

Space station commander Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren carried out a busy but mostly trouble-free spacewalk Friday, routing ammonia coolant back to the prime radiator used by one of the lab’s solar arrays and bypassing a secondary radiator that was activated three years ago to help pinpoint a coolant leak.

Planning for December Falcon 9 launch, Orbcomm ships satellites

November 6, 2015 Stephen Clark

The first shipment of Orbcomm’s 11-satellite payload for the Falcon 9 rocket’s first flight since a June launch failure has arrived at Cape Canaveral, and the rest of the spacecraft will reach the Florida spaceport in the coming days, Orbcomm officials said Thursday.

Kelly, Lindgren set for second spacewalk

November 5, 2015 William Harwood

Space station commander Scott Kelly and flight engineer Kjell Lindgren are gearing up for their second spacewalk in nine days Friday, a planned six-and-a-half-hour excursion to reconfigure the ammonia cooling system used by one of the lab’s sets of solar arrays.

New Horizons takes aim on next target

November 5, 2015 Stephen Clark

In a triumph of deep space navigation and with Pluto shrinking in its wake, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has steered on a course to reach a tiny object named 2014 MU69 for a whirlwind visit on New Year’s Day 2019.

Solar wind blasting away Martian atmosphere

November 5, 2015 William Harwood

The solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles blasted away from the sun, is slowly but surely stripping away Mars’ atmosphere and likely played a major role in turning the red planet from a habitable world in the distant past into the dry, frozen wasteland seen today, scientists said Thursday.

NASA delays cargo award again, eliminates Boeing from contention

November 5, 2015 Stephen Clark

NASA has delayed the award of new contracts for cargo transportation services between Earth and the International Space Station, and eliminated an uncrewed version of Boeing’s human-rated CST-100 Starliner capsule from the competition, officials said Thursday.

NASA quietly posts images of explosive Antares failure

November 5, 2015 Stephen Clark

Less than a week after publishing the results of an independent investigation into last year’s Antares rocket failure, NASA has released new photos of the catastrophic crash just after liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia.

Video released from Atlas 5 rocket launch of cubesat flock

November 4, 2015 Justin Ray

Remarkable rocketcam video footage of the Oct. 8 flight a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from California has been released to show its hitchhiker cubesat payloads shooting into orbit.

Air Force declares failure on Super Strypi test launch

November 4, 2015 Stephen Clark

The first flight of an experimental U.S. military rocket designed for low-cost, quick-reaction satellite launches ended in failure over Hawaii on Tuesday, the Air Force said, destroying 13 small research spacecraft clustered on the mission for NASA researchers and university students.