Stephen Clark – Page 313 – Spaceflight Now

Atlas 5

Atlas 5 rocket readied for high-altitude multi-satellite flight Saturday

April 13, 2018 Stephen Clark

United Launch Alliance crews at Cape Canaveral are finishing final preparations for an Atlas 5 rocket launch Saturday evening to dispatch three U.S. military satellites directly to an orbital perch more than 20,000 miles over the equator.

Orbital ATK confident new rocket will win Air Force support

April 12, 2018 Stephen Clark

Orbital ATK’s bid to join the U.S. military’s roster of rockets to haul the most critical national security satellites into orbit faces stiff competition from entrenched launch providers and billionaire entrepreneurs, but the company is confident its Next Generation Launch system will win one of three funding agreements the Air Force is expected to award this summer.

ISRO launches for second time in two weeks

April 11, 2018 Stephen Clark

Riding a column of red-hot rocket exhaust, an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle fired into orbit Wednesday with a replacement satellite for the country’s home-grown navigation network.

SpaceX rocket test-fired at Cape Canaveral for NASA telescope launch

April 11, 2018 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s launch team loaded super-chilled liquid propellants into a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday and fired the booster’s nine first stage engines at Cape Canaveral, marching toward liftoff Monday with a NASA observatory built to find planets around other stars in our galactic neighborhood.

Photos: PSLV poised for navigation satellite launch

April 11, 2018 Stephen Clark

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle sits on its launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on the country’s eastern coastline, awaiting blastoff with the IRNSS 1I navigation satellite.

Live coverage: India’s PSLV climbs into space with navigation satellite

April 11, 2018 Stephen Clark

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off at 2234 GMT (6:34 p.m. EDT) Wednesday with the country’s ninth navigation satellite, bolstering a regional positioning and timing network after the loss of a navigation craft on a previous PSLV mission last year.

Q&A with Mike Laidley, vice president of Orbital ATK’s Next Generation Launch program (members only)

April 10, 2018 Stephen Clark

Mike Laidley leads development of Orbital ATK’s Next Generation Launch system, a rocket the commercial space company hopes will provide a foothold in the lucrative market to launch U.S. military satellites, a business currently dominated by SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

Chinese Long March 4C rocket deploys four satellites in orbit

April 10, 2018 Stephen Clark

Three Chinese military surveillance spacecraft and an experimental nanosatellite rode a Long March 4C rocket into orbit Tuesday.

Boeing proposes extending test flight of commercial crew capsule

April 9, 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA has agreed to consider a Boeing proposal to extend the first piloted test flight of its commercial CST-100 Starliner crew capsule from two weeks to up to six months with an extra crew member for the International Space Station, hedging against potential delays that could jeopardize U.S. crew access to the orbiting outpost.

Investigation into Zuma failure reportedly lays blame on Northrop Grumman

April 9, 2018 Stephen Clark

Government investigators have exonerated SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in the loss of a top secret space mission known as Zuma in January, blaming a malfunction in a component modified by Northrop Grumman that connected the launcher with its classified payload, according to the Wall Street Journal.