Staying true to a corporate philosophy that favors high-visibility flight tests, SpaceX plans to continue wringing out major parts of the company’s human-rated Dragon spaceship in a sequence of dramatic flights leading up to the capsule’s first crewed mission scheduled for 2017.
Failure struck Russia’s troubled space program for the second time in three weeks Saturday, when a Proton rocket carrying a high-tech satellite for Mexico’s new $1.6 billion space-based communications network crashed shortly after liftoff.
Russia’s Proton rocket launched from Kazakhstan at 0547 GMT (1:47 a.m. EDT) Saturday with Mexico’s Centenario communications satellite, but the Russian space agency reported an anomaly occurred some time after liftoff.
NASA has formally certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch all but the space agency’s most costly robotic science missions, beginning with a a U.S.-French oceanography satellite set for liftoff from California in July.
A Boeing-built communications satellite for the Mexican government is set for liftoff Saturday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Proton rocket.
The U.S. Air Force has identified the launch of a next-generation GPS navigation satellite for the first in a series of competitive rocket procurements between United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, service officials announced Wednesday.
Satellite shards scattered by the explosion of an aging U.S. military weather spacecraft in February will remain in orbit for many decades, according to researchers who specialize in space debris.
Soprano and would-be space tourist Sarah Brightman, who was in training for a flight to the International Space Station this fall aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft, will not be chasing her dream aloft after all.