News – Page 490 – Spaceflight Now

Photos: Soyuz MS-02 spaceship lands in Kazakhstan

April 10, 2017 Stephen Clark

Carrying three space station crew members back home after 173 days in orbit, the Russian Soyuz MS-02 landing craft touched down in Kazakhstan on Monday after a parachute-assisted descent through clear skies.

Video: Expedition 50 landing

April 10, 2017 Justin Ray

Remarkable video shot near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, shows the Soyuz capsule descending under parachute for an on-target landing. The touchdown safely capped the three-man Expedition 50 crew’s 173-day mission to the International Space Station.

U.S. military orders two more surveillance satellites to roam geosynchronous orbit

April 10, 2017 Stephen Clark

Orbital ATK started work on two more surveillance satellites for the U.S. Air Force’s geosynchronous neighborhood watch program late last year as the military aims to expand its ability to track and investigate other objects in the heavily-trafficked belt more than 22,000 miles over the equator.

Soyuz makes pinpoint landing in Kazakhstan with crew of three

April 10, 2017 William Harwood

Astronaut Shane Kimbrough and his two Russian crewmates — Soyuz MS-02 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineer Andrey Borisenko — undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth Monday, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out an extended 173-day mission.

Live coverage: Three-man crew closes out 173-day space mission

April 9, 2017 Stephen Clark

Outgoing space station commander Shane Kimbrough and two Russian crewmates returned to Earth on Monday, riding a Soyuz capsule in a bubble of hot plasma to a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan. The trio undocked from the space station at 0757 GMT (3:57 a.m. EDT) and landed on the Kazakh steppe at 1120 GMT (7:20 a.m. EDT) Monday.

NASA, Roscosmos open to extending station operations to 2028

April 8, 2017 Stephen Clark

Top officials from NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, could decide soon to commit to keeping the International Space Station staffed and flying through at least 2028, four years after the research lab’s current retirement date.

Videos: Cygnus prepped for mission to space laboratory

April 8, 2017 Justin Ray

This is video footage documenting preparations for the commercial Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo freighter to perform the OA-7 mission to the International Space Station. Activities occurred at the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Station Processing Facility and the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The craft will be boosted into orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on April 18 at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT).

Italian radar satellite, European exoplanet telescope to launch on Soyuz next year

April 7, 2017 Stephen Clark

The Italian government has decided to launch two next-generation radar reconnaissance satellites on Soyuz and Vega rockets from French Guiana, and a European Space Agency telescope to study the structures of planets around other stars will likely ride to orbit as a co-passenger on one of the missions.

Videos: Strap in aboard Blue Origin’s suborbital spaceship

April 6, 2017 Stephen Clark

Step inside a prototype of Blue Origin’s crew capsule to get a glimpse of what space tourists will experience when the spaceship begins suborbital flights with passengers in 2018.

Photos: Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster on display

April 6, 2017 Stephen Clark

Scarred from five trips to the edge of space and back, Blue Origin’s privately-developed New Shepard rocket was on vertical display this week at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.