2016 – Page 60 – Spaceflight Now

Departure of Europe’s first Mars rover delayed to 2020

May 2, 2016 Stephen Clark

Europe’s ExoMars rover will not be ready for launch in 2018, officials said Monday, forcing a two-year delay for the ambitious mission to drill into the Martian surface and search for the remnants of past life.

Hold-down test firing complete for next SpaceX launch

May 2, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX technicians are attaching a Japanese communications satellite to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of a planned launch Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral.

Boeing borrows from inventory to speed docking adapter delivery

May 1, 2016 Stephen Clark

Spare parts warehoused in the the United States and Russia will help Boeing finish assembly of a third space station docking port to receive arriving astronauts aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules, replacing a unit lost in a Falcon 9 launch failure last year.

Commercial Falcon 9 rocket launch scheduled for next week

April 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket launch is set for no earlier than May 5, sources said Friday, with a Japanese television broadcasting satellite heading to orbit from Cape Canaveral.

Japan gives up on rescuing black hole observatory

April 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan’s space agency says it has ceased efforts to rescue a failed X-ray astronomy satellite after it spun out of control and broke apart in orbit, declaring the nearly $400 million mission lost two months after its launch.

Photos: Soyuz launch inaugurates new Russian spaceport

April 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

The first launch from the nearly $3 billion Vostochny Cosmodrome took off Thursday, carrying three satellites into orbit from the new spaceport nestled in Russia’s forested Far East.

Mixture ratio valve the culprit in Atlas 5 anomaly, next launch this summer

April 29, 2016 Justin Ray

With the performance hit on the Atlas 5 rocket’s most recent flight last month now isolated to a faulty valve, preparations to resume the manifest are underway as United Launch Alliance workers stack the next booster for blastoff this summer.

Europe’s Sentinel satellites generating huge ‘Big Data’ archive

April 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

With a second radar surveillance satellite already returning images less than three days after launch, managers in charge of Europe’s growing fleet of Sentinel environment-monitoring spacecraft will grapple with an immense ‘Big Data’ challenge as the multibillion-dollar program enters a new phase.

First launch from Russia’s new cosmodrome declared a success

April 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

A Soyuz rocket streaked into sunny skies over a new multibillion-dollar Siberian spaceport Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin watching from a nearby viewing stand, opening another gateway to space for satellites, and eventually cosmonaut crews.

Indian launch rounds out domestic navigation network

April 28, 2016 Stephen Clark

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off Thursday with the seventh and final spacecraft for a regional navigation network to provide position data to users across the subcontinent independent of foreign satellite systems.