Search Results for “date” – Page 280

High winds keep Falcon 9 rocket grounded

March 14, 2017 Stephen Clark

Rain showers and gloomy clouds blew through NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday evening, but it was high winds that prevented liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday with a commercial communications satellite. Launch has been rescheduled for Thursday at 1:35 a.m. EDT (0535 GMT).

Falcon 9 launch timeline with EchoStar 23

March 13, 2017 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral early Tuesday, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the EchoStar 23 communications satellite into orbit 34 minutes later.

Live coverage: Falcon 9 launches with TV satellite

March 13, 2017 Stephen Clark

SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Thursday, two days after high winds prevented liftoff. The nearly 23-story booster carried the EchoStar 23 communications satellite into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to provide broadcast television programming across Brazil.

Perils and discoveries lie ahead for long-lived Saturn orbiter

March 11, 2017 Stephen Clark

Scientists are bracing for a blitz of discoveries in the last six months of Cassini’s mission at Saturn, when the plutonium-powered robot will repeatedly ram through an unexplored gap in the planet’s famous rings, then make a destructive plunge into the atmosphere in September.

Falcon 9 rocket performs static fire test

March 10, 2017 Stephen Clark

Held down by heavy-duty restraints, a Falcon 9 rocket fired up its nine Merlin engines for more than three seconds Thursday evening in a key readiness test before launching with a commercial television broadcast satellite next week.

Orion’s parachutes tested under launch abort conditions

March 9, 2017 Stephen Clark

A model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, in development to loft astronaut crews into deep space, was dropped from a U.S. Air Force cargo plane over Arizona on Wednesday in the latest in a series of tests to verify the capsule’s parachutes are up to the job of safely landing with humans on-board.

Q&A with Earl Maize, Cassini project manager (members only)

March 9, 2017 Stephen Clark

Earl Maize, who leads the Cassini mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, started working on the Saturn orbiter project in 1992. In September, the spacecraft will take an intentional plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, gaining unprecedented up-close measurements and ending a 13-year odyssey round the ringed planet.

Blue Origin details new rocket’s capabilities, signs first orbital customer

March 7, 2017 Stephen Clark

Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos revealed new details of his space company’s reusable orbital-class booster Tuesday, releasing an animation illustrating the rocket’s liftoff from Cape Canaveral and announcing a contract with Eutelsat to put a commercial communications satellite on one of the launcher’s first missions.

Sierra Nevada to resume Dream Chaser flight tests

March 6, 2017 Stephen Clark

An atmospheric test model of Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane is being readied for tow and landing tests at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California this spring.

Live coverage: European environmental satellite launched by Vega rocket

March 6, 2017 Stephen Clark

A Vega rocket launched from French Guiana at 0149:24 GMT Tuesday (8:49:24 p.m. EST Monday) with Europe’s fifth Sentinel environmental satellite. The Sentinel 2B observatory will take the pulse of Earth’s vegetation, monitoring crops, forests, urban sprawl, and pollution from polar orbit.