The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on its maiden flight Wednesday, beginning a series of demonstration missions as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) programme. The mission, known as Dragon C1, launched from Cape Canaveral atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 10:43am Eastern, before the spacecraft splashed down around 19:00 UTC.
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NASA managers are realigning Endeavour’s processing flow milestones, as her launch date slips to an interim placeholder of April 1, 2011. Although the original late February launch date was fully supported by all the hardware elements participating in STS-134, the slip allows for extra contingency time for late changes to be carried out on the [...]
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As part of a full launch dress rehearsal at Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, SpaceX conduct a static fire of their Falcon 9 launch vehicle on Saturday, in preparation for the first Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) launch of the Dragon spacecraft. Friday’s static fire was aborted at 1.1 seconds due to high chamber readings Engine [...]
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Following the decision to move Discovery’s STS-133 launch date target to No Earlier Than (NET) February 3, NASA managers have begun realigning the International Space Station (ISS) manifest. An April 1 placeholder has been selected for Endeavour’s STS-134 mission, while Japan’s HTV resupply vehicle is also involved in supporting the manifest changes.
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The US Air Force’s X-37B has successfully returned back to Earth on Friday morning, landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 9:16am GMT. Also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle 1 (OTV-1), its maiden voyage involved 220 days on orbit, conducting experiments and testing its systems, before carrying out the first autonomous re-entry [...]
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The all-powerful Program Requirements Control Board (PRCB) met on Thursday to discuss the status of ET-137′s stringer crack root cause, as part of their effort to gain flight rationale for STS-133. Forward options range from conducting a Tanking Test, through to the contingency of rolling back and destacking the vehicle - in order to carry out modifications to [...]
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