Tag: Roscosmos
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Launch Roundup: Falcon 9’s 300th Flight and SpaceX to launch lunar lander
On the week of the sixth anniversary of the first flight of Falcon Heavy, SpaceX launched four separate Falcon 9 missions. Meanwhile, Roscosmos resupplied the International Space Station (ISS) with Progress MS-26 launching on Soyuz. Early Thursday morning, Falcon 9 launched from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) taking NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud,…
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Launch Roundup: Rocket Lab returns to flight; SpaceX launches more Starlink
SpaceX had a lighter week of launches, with Rocket Lab, Russia, and China also launching rockets. Following several delays, SpaceX launched the Starlink Group 6-34 mission. Rocket Lab returned to flight on Friday with “The Moon God Awakens” mission. This comes after a previous mission, dubbed “We Will Never Desert You,” failed to reach orbit…
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Launch Roundup: SpaceX on pace to hit 100 launches in 2023, Soyuz to launch Bars-M
Following a busy week for SpaceX with the launch of two Starlink missions and the second launch of Starship, SpaceX is currently on track to meet its 100 launch goal of 2023. The first launch of the week took place on Wednesday, with North Korea successfully placing the Manligyeong 1 satellite into orbit. Later that…
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Putin wants to know why Russia can only build 40 satellites a year
Based on preliminary data, nearly 2,400 spacecraft have been launched into orbit this year. A significant majority of these, about 75 percent, were Starlink satellites built and flown by SpaceX. But other countries, such as China, have also built and launched hundreds of satellites this year. There has been a dramatic growth in the production…
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Russia renamed its ambitious satellite program after Putin misspoke its name
It was always abundantly clear that the leader of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos from 2018 to 2022, Dmitry Rogozin, sought to kowtow to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now we have an anecdote from Putin himself that highlights how much. The story concerns a satellite constellation now known as Sfera (or Sphere, in English), a…
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ISS Roundup: Expedition 70 underway, Rubio’s record stay in space, technical issues, completed EVAs
The last few months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been eventful. Expedition 70 is underway after two crew handovers, a bearing on a solar array rotary joint seized up, and a coolant leak on the Russian segment occurred. Currently, the ISS crew has completed Russian EVA-61, although key objectives were not fully accomplished,…
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For the third time in a year, Russian hardware on the space station is leaking
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli looked out of the large windows on the International Space Station on Monday afternoon and saw that it was snowing in space. Well, not really snowing. But there were flakes flying by that looked a lot like flurries. They emanated from one of two radiators that service the “Nauka” science module…
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Russian space station laboratory module coolant leak under investigation
File Photo of the Nauka module at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Shane Kimbrough An apparent exterior coolant leak from a Russian laboratory module at the International Space Station has been reported by the crew. It follows similar leaks that struck a Russian Soyuz crew ferry craft and a Progress cargo ship within the past…
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Russia talks a big future in space while its overall budget is quietly cut
The leader of Russia’s space corporation, Yuri Borisov, discussed his country’s future ambitions in space on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress. He spoke expansively about Russia’s plans to build a new space station in low-Earth orbit, the Russian Orbital Station, as well as other initiatives. “We are expecting to design, manufacture, and launch several…
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NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is home after a year in space
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian crewmates parachuted to a landing on the remote steppe of Kazakhstan on Wednesday, capping a 371-day mission at the International Space Station, the longest single spaceflight ever undertaken by an American. It was also the third-longest mission off the planet in the history of human spaceflight, eclipsed only…