Tag: Russia
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Rocket Report: Falcon 9 flies for 300th time; an intriguing launch from Russia
Welcome to Edition 6.31 of the Rocket Report! Photographers at Cape Canaveral, Florida, noticed a change to the spaceport’s skyline this week. Blue Origin has erected a full-size simulator of its New Glenn rocket vertically on its launch pad for a series of fit checks and tests. Late last year, we reported Blue Origin was…
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Three terms sure to grab attention: Russia, nuclear, anti-satellite weapon
When you think about the prospect of Russia putting nukes in space, you can understand why some people might fill in the blanks and envision a surprise apocalyptic bombardment from orbit. That is the nightmarish prophecy members of Congress tried to extinguish Wednesday after news leaked that US intelligence officials obtained information about Russian preparations…
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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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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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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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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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SpaceX Crew-6 returns to Earth after six-month ISS Stay
After more than six months in space, four people splashed down in the waters near Florida. The SpaceX Crew-6 mission, which launched on March 2 and docked with the International Space Station (ISS) the following day, undocked on Sept. 3 at 7:05 EDT (11:05 UTC). Recovery vessels retrieved the crew and their capsule, Crew Dragon…
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Russia’s Luna 25 lander crashes on the Moon
An animation depicts the Luna 25 probe in orbit above the Moon’s surface. Image: Roscomos. Russia’s first mission to the Moon for nearly 50 years ended in failure when the Luna 25 spacecraft crashed onto the surface, the Russian space agency Roscomos said Sunday. In an official statement published to the Telegram social media account…
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Russia heads back to the Moon with Luna 25
Russia’s space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country’s first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976. The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia’s Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a…
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End of the line for Russia and Ukraine’s partnership in rocketry
A last gasp in a long-standing link between Russia and Ukraine in the field of rocketry could come this week in an unlikely place—the rural wetlands of eastern Virginia—halfway around the world from the battlefields where the nations’ military forces are locked in a deadly conflict. A commercial Antares rocket owned by the US aerospace…