Tag: Russia
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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…
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Trend or aberration? Russia is launching foreign satellites again
For the first time since the invasion of Ukraine essentially cut off Russia’s space industry from foreign customers, a Russian rocket lifted off Tuesday and carried satellites into orbit with commercial technology from Western companies. The payloads from companies based in the United Kingdom and Luxembourg flew on a satellite owned by the United Arab…
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Launch Roundup: Virgin Galactic performs crewed suborbital mission; SpaceX launches Euclid
Four launches are planned for the week of June 24 to July 1. The Russians opened the launches, with a Meteor weather satellite riding a Soyuz rocket on Tuesday, June 27, while Virgin Galactic flew its Galactic 01 crewed suborbital mission Thursday, June 29. Firefly’s Alpha rocket was thought to be making its first operational…
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Soyuz 2.1a launches Kondor-FKA n°1 satellite from Vostochny
At 21:14 UTC on May 26, a Soyuz 2.1a rocket launched from Site 1S at Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia. Onboard the Soyuz was the Kondor-FKA n°1 satellite, which was lofted to a Sun-synchronous orbit. The Kondor satellites are a series of Earth observation satellites that provide reconnaissance services for the Russian military. Kondor Satellites The…