Japan has lost contact with the newly-launched Hitomi space telescope, and ground observations indicate the satellite has shed debris and may be tumbling in orbit more than 350 miles above Earth.
This collection of official NASA photographs captures the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket rolling to the pad on Monday, successfully blasting off Tuesday and the Cygnus freighter arriving at the International Space Station on Saturday morning.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station used the robotic arm to snare a commercial cargo ship and bring it aboard this morning while traveling at five miles per second.
The International Space Station crew reaches out with the Canadian robotic arm and grabs the Cygnus OA-6 commercial cargo ship filled with 7,485 pounds of supplies, food and science gear.
The commercial Cygnus freighter carrying over 7,000 pounds of food, supplies and science experiments completed a flawless rendezvous with the International Space Station on Saturday morning. It was captured by the robotic arm at 6:51 a.m. EDT (1051 GMT).
These narrated videos show the pre-launch preparations that readied the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket and the Orbital ATK Cygnus commercial cargo-delivery spacecraft for flight and rolling to Complex 41 for liftoff to the International Space Station.
Work to create a new all-American rocket, the United Launch Alliance Vulcan-Centaur, has passed its first major hurdle for its first flight in three years, officials announced Thursday.
The U.S. Defense Department’s internal watchdog has opened a probe into whether the Pentagon’s contracts with United Launch Alliance were properly awarded after a former ULA executive implied the government rigged a recent procurement in favor of the company.
The Centaur upper stage launching the Cygnus space freighter Tuesday persevered through a velocity shortfall from the first stage of the Atlas 5 rocket, improvising with a longer firing to reach the correct orbit.