December 2017 – Page 3 – Spaceflight Now

Photos: Falcon 9 lifts off from Cape Canaveral, returns for landing

December 20, 2017 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket closed out a busy 2017 Cape Canaveral launch schedule on Dec. 15 with a successful liftoff on a space station resupply mission. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster, making its second launch, returned to Florida’s Space Coast for an on-target landing.

NOAA’s GOES-16 weather satellite declared operational

December 20, 2017 Stephen Clark

An upgraded NOAA weather satellite has entered service after a year of checkouts to provide critical, rapidly-refreshed imagery to forecasters in time for next year’s severe storm and hurricane seasons in the United States and the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX releases first pictures of Falcon Heavy rocket

December 20, 2017 Stephen Clark

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk released the first images of his company’s Falcon Heavy rocket Wednesday, showing the massive triple-core booster almost fully assembled inside its hangar at the Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A, where it is scheduled to lift off some time in January.

Soyuz with three-man crew docks with space station

December 19, 2017 William Harwood

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian commander, a NASA flight engineer and a Japanese physician-astronaut docked with the International Space Station early Tuesday, capping a smooth two-day rendezvous to boost the lab’s crew back to six.

Station astronauts begin unpacking refurbished SpaceX cargo craft

December 18, 2017 Stephen Clark

A SpaceX-owned supply ship arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday with 2.4 tons of cargo, including space debris and solar energy monitors mounted in the Dragon spacecraft’s external payload bay and more than 3,400 pounds of gear inside its reused pressurized module.

Video: Dragon capsule arrives at space station

December 18, 2017 Stephen Clark

Closing out a two-day pursuit following launch from Cape Canaveral, a reused SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule arrived at the International Space Station Sunday with more than 4,800 pounds of supplies and experiments.

Soyuz blasts off on two-day flight to space station

December 17, 2017 William Harwood

While a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship closed in on the International Space Station early Sunday, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasted off from frigid Kazakhstan, boosting a fresh three-man crew into orbit for a two-day flight to the lab complex.

Photos: European rocket launched from South America

December 16, 2017 Stephen Clark

An Ariane 5 rocket launch Tuesday added four more navigation satellites to Europe’s Galileo network with an on-target deployment following liftoff from a jungle spaceport on the northeastern coast of South America.

Live coverage: Fresh crew docks at space station

December 16, 2017 Stephen Clark

Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov, NASA flight engineer Scott Tingle and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai docked with the International Space Station Tuesday at 3:39 a.m. EST (0839 GMT), two days after blastoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Rocket Lab test launch delayed to early 2018

December 16, 2017 Stephen Clark

The launch of a light-class booster by Rocket Lab, a U.S.-New Zealand company aiming to provide rides to orbit for small satellites, has been delayed to early next year after technical reviews, repairs and unfavorable weather combined to keep the test flight grounded this week.