Tag: SpaceX
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NASA to have limited role in SpaceX’s planned Mars campaign
Artist’s concept of a Dragon spacecraft at Mars. Credit: SpaceX Expertise, input and advice from seasoned NASA engineers will improve SpaceX’s chances of nailing the first commercial landing on Mars as soon as late 2018, a senior space agency official said Wednesday, but Elon Musk’s space transport company will likely seek more independence from U.S.…
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Containment of Vandenberg wildfire begins as hundreds of firefighters battle
Updated at 12:05 a.m. EDT with latest acreage and containment numbers A CalFire S-2T makes a Phos-Chek drop on the Vandenberg fire. Credit: Santa Barbara County Fire Dept. United Launch Alliance technicians were allowed to return to the Atlas 5 pad Tuesday as firefighters continued to wage air and ground campaigns against the wildfire burning…
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Uncontrolled wildfire at Vandenberg Air Force Base continues to rage
Updated Tuesday @ 1600 GMT with new acreage and containment numbers; adding IR maps Flames burn behind the Atlas 5 rocket pad Monday. Credit: Santa Barbara County Fire Dept. The escalating wildfire at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base grew even larger Monday despite the round-the-clock efforts of firefighters trying to bring the blaze under control…
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Quick work saved the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission from nearby explosion
Smoke pours off Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad shortly after a Sept. 1 explosion. Credit: U.S. Air Force Engineers scrambled to keep NASA’s billion-dollar asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on track for its launch last week in the aftermath of an explosion a mile away at SpaceX’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Quick action by safety…
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SES stands by SpaceX after getting ‘good discount’ on reused rocket
Three of SpaceX’s recovered Falcon 9 boosters inside a hangar at launch pad 39A. Credit: SpaceX One of SpaceX’s most loyal commercial customers, the European-based telecom satellite operator SES, remains committed to flying a spacecraft aboard a “refurbished” Falcon 9 booster as soon as the company resumes rocket flights, officials said. SpaceX and SES announced…
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Musk: No answers so far in ‘difficult’ failure investigation
Credit: US Launch Report SpaceX is more than a week into a company-led probe of a launch pad explosion Sept. 1 that destroyed a Falcon 9 booster and an Israeli communications satellite, but the investigation so far has turned up no smoking gun on the cause of the mishap, Elon Musk said Friday. In a…
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SpaceX looks to historic Pad 39A for Falcon 9 flight operations
Following the loss of its Falcon 9 rocket during a static fire test, SpaceX is deep into a failure investigation process, which includes an assessment of the damage suffered by SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral. With that pad likely to be out of action for some time, SpaceX is turning its attention next door, to…
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Spacecom to recoup value of lost satellite, could ask SpaceX for compensation
File photo of the Amos 6 satellite during ground testing. Credit: Spacecom Ltd. The Israeli company which owned a commercial communications satellite destroyed in an explosion last week at SpaceX’s launch pad in Florida will receive more than $200 million in payouts stemming from the incident, and hopes to purchase a replacement, officials said Monday.…
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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ‘deeply disappointed’ to lose his satellite in SpaceX’s rocket explosion
Mark Zuckerberg saw the Amos-6 satellite as the first step in Facebook’s plan to provide satellite internet access to underserved regions of the world. Today’s loss of a Falcon 9 rocket and its satellite payload was a bummer for Facebook billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg as well as for SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk. “As I’m…
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Falcon 9 explodes during AMOS-6 static fire test
SpaceX has suffered a failure during the static test fire of the Falcon 9 rocket that was to help haul the AMOS-6 satellite to geostationary orbit later this week. The rocket suffered an unspecified failure in the second stage’s LOX tank during the test early on Thursday. Fire crews are currently putting out fires at…