The Sea Launch company’s Land Launch division have followed up their return to flight of their oceanic adventures with the launch of their Zenit 3SLB, which is carrying the Intelsat-18 telecommunications satellite into orbit. Launch was on schedule at 17:00 Eastern (21:00 UTC) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, ahead of over six hours of flight [...]

An Orbital Minotaur IV+ rocket has launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, on Tuesday, carrying an experimental communications satellite for the United States Navy and Operationally Responsive Space Office. Liftoff was on schedule at 15:49 UTC (07:49 local time).

Sea Launch have made their long awaited return action on Saturday, with the launch of ATLANTIC BIRD 7 – a communications satellite. Liftoff was on schedule for the opening of a 57-minute window, at 1:18am PDT (08:18 GMT), from the Odyssey Launch Platform located in the Pacific Ocean. Spacecraft separation and acquisition were both classed [...]

As NASA’s defunct Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS) continues to head towards its death – which will result in re-entry around September 23 – NASA managers have discussed ways of improving their fragmentation models for future returning spacecraft, with the aim of reducing the the debris footprint for hardware which may threaten to survive entry.

The Delta II rocket has launched on its 150th flight on Saturday, departing from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 17 for the final time on the second of two launch opportunities – at 9:08am Eastern (13:08 UTC). The rocket is carrying NASA’s two GRAIL spacecraft, which will be used to study the Moon’s gravitational field.

As NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) produced the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites, NASA managers are working on internal plans to protect the “heritage sites” from potential damage from future visiting spacecraft – such as the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) vehicles – listing a [...]

Like its sister probe Voyager 2, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been an instrumental force in our continued push to gain a better understanding of our solar system. From its encounters with Jupiter and Saturn, to its ongoing mission to explore the outer boundaries of the solar system, Voyager 1 stands as the farthest man-made [...]

With less than one week to go before the launch of the twin GRAIL lunar satellites from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL, NASA has completed the pre-launch flight readiness reviews for both GRAIL and the veteran Delta II rocket which will propel the spacecrafts into their cruise to Earth’s only natural satellite.

On August 20, 1977, the intrepid spacecraft Voyager 2 launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL on what was supposed to be only a four year mission to Jupiter and Saturn. But exactly 34 years later, Voyager 2 has cemented itself into the upper echelons of unmanned space exploration, continuing to beam back [...]

Orbital Sciences Corporation launched a Minotaur IV rocket carrying an experimental hypersonic prototype for the United States Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency into space on a suborbital trajectory. The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 8 at 14:45 UTC (07:45 local time) on Thursday. However, the HTV-2b [...]

NASA’s Human Architecture Team (HAT) is actively working on a roadmap towards evolvable demonstrations of Propellant Depots – with a potential goal of setting up an “interplanetary highway” to enable low cost exploration. With proposals being sought, industry sources point to a small, 30 metric ton capacity, Centaur derived depot as an initial leading candidate.

The Voyager spacecraft - NASA’s longest operational interplanetary probes – are about to enter their 34th year of operation, as they continue their sail out of the confines of our solar system toward the ever-present void of interstellar space. And as controllers on Earth manage the gradual and progressive power-down of the two spacecraft, the Voyagers [...]

United Launch Alliance (ULA) have launched their Atlas V carrying NASA’s Juno probe on its way to Jupiter on Friday. The liftoff of the flagship mission was delayed by 51 minutes, due to a ground leak and a boat in the range box, prior to launching at 12:25 local time. Juno will become the first spacecraft [...]

Preparations for the launch of the NASA Juno mission to Jupiter are proceeding well, as the mission passed through its Flight Readiness Review (FRR). Juno will be riding on the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V, a vehicle which arrived on an Antonov An-124 for the final time, as Atlas’ began sharing a ride on the [...]

International Launch Services (ILS) have launched their Proton-M rocket again on Friday, as the workhorse lofted the SES-3 and KazSat-2 telecommunications satellites – the first “shared” ILS Proton launch – into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan was on schedule at 23:16pm UTC, ahead of over nine hours of flight [...]

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) have launched their Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral on Saturday morning, carrying the second in a series of next-generation Global Positioning Satellites - GPS IIF-2. Launch occurred at the start of nineteen minute window which opened at 06:45 UTC (02:45 EDT).

Orbital Sciences Corporation have launched the ORS-1 spacecraft for the United States’ Operationally Responsive Space Office via the tenth flight of a Minotaur I rocket, from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island. The successful launch – at 11:09pm Eastern – came after a weather related scrub on Tuesday and two delays during Wednesday’s countdown [...]

With the US Segment of the International Space Station (ISS) now complete, NASA managers are turning their attention away from the era of construction and maintenance of the station and toward the new era of utilization, which includes advanced technology demos ranging from beam energy transfer to robotic servicing.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) have launched their Delta II rocket to loft the SAC-D spacecraft into orbit for the Argentine space agency, CONAE, on Friday. Launch occurred at the start of a five minute window opening at 14:20:13 UTC (07:20 local time), lifting off from Space Launch Complex 2W at the Vandenberg Air Force [...]