Astra will launch its Rocket 3.1 launch vehicle at the beginning of August. This will mark Astra’s first orbital launch attempt taking off from Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska.
Starlink 9 will be the ninth operational launch of SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite constellation. It will add 57 satellites to the constellation. A Falcon 9 rocket will launch this mission from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex LC-39A.
SpaceX’s Starship prototype SN-5 will perform its first 150 m test launch in early August, taking of and landing in Boca Chica, Texas.
How do you get back from orbit? Do you pump the brakes and fall right out of space? We do a summary of how you deorbit, go over the hardware that allows the Crew Dragon capsule to reenter and safely splashdown.
Featured Image used with permission by Trevor Mahlmann What does this all mean? We lifted off for MARS! Yes you read that correctly, NASA has spent years developing its next piece of hardware to make the daring trek to the red […]
We are going back to MARS! Yes you read that correctly, NASA has spent years developing its next piece of hardware to make the daring trek to the red planet. The rover dubbed Perseverance will launch from the the East Coast of the United States and in around six months to land on Mars.
We do an overview of NASA’s Perseverance Rover (formerly Mars 2020), the rocket that will take it there, the timeline, and the landing sequence. All the while, drawing comparison to its older sibling, Curiosity, to see what’s changed and what has stayed the same.
It’s that season! With a previous United Arab Emirates launch to Mars and NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 mission, China has decided to join the party! We have a unique window of opportunity where the orbits of Earth and Mars line up perfectly! Tianwen 1 consists of an orbiter, lander and rover. After a previous failed attempt, this will mark China’s first time attempting to land on Mars! It will also be the first non US-American or Soviet/Russian rover on the surface of Mars.
ROSCOSMOS will be launching Progress MS-15 to the International Space Station. The spacecraft will be launched on a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from Launch Complex 31/6 in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
SpaceX will launch South Korea’s first dedicated military communications satellite, ANASIS-II, on July 14, 2020. The spacecraft will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. ANASIS-II will be delivered into a geostationary orbit (GEO) over the Korean Peninsula.
The UAE’s first Mars probe “Al Amal”, or Hope will launch from Japan atop a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-2A-202 rocket.
Northrop Grumman is launching a national security payload (NROL-129) on its Minotaur IV rocket vehicle, from Wallops Island, Virginia.
Rocket Lab’s “Pics or It Didn’t Happen” mission, launching from their Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, will fly five payloads into orbit atop its Electron rocket. The payload is a combination of National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and Royal Australian Air Force smallsats.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the American military’s next generation GPS Block III satellite from SLC-40. The launch is expected to take place NET July. Watch it live with Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
An expected late March launch, it is a return-to-flight for Arianespace’s Vega launch vehicle. This mission is a test flight, a proof-of-concept for a new smallsat dispenser. Payload includes SSMS-POC dispenser with multiple satellites.
China is sending the final BeiDou version three navigation satellite into a geosynchronous orbit on their Long March 3B rocket. This will complete building the third generation Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). Similar to the American Global Positioning System (GPS), BDS is a Chinese satellite constellation that provides users with positioning data.
Rocket Lab’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” mission, launching from their Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, will fly five payloads into orbit atop its Electron rocket. The payload is a combination of National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and Royal Australian Air Force smallsats.
Starlink 8 will be SpaceX’s eigth operational launch for its Starlink communication satellite constellation. It will add 60 satellites to the constellation. For the first time on a Starlink mission, it will have a secondary payload from Planet Lab consisting of three SkySat Earth observation satellites. A Falcon 9 rocket will launch this mission from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40.
Starlink 7 will be the seventh operational launch of SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite constellation. It will add 60 satellites to the constellation. A Falcon 9 rocket will launch this mission from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon DM-2 mission will launch NASA astronauts Douglas G. Hurley and Robert L. Behnken to the ISS no earlier than late May 2020. This will be Dragon’s first flight to carry astronauts into orbit and is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. Watch it live with Everyday Astronaut Tim Dodd.
A timeline video that follows Bob and Doug from suit-up, transport to the launch site, entering the Dragon, fuelling, launch, and docking with the International Space Station. Weather scrub criteria is also included.
This is the maiden orbital flight for Virgin’s LauncherOne system. It is an air-launched rocket carried aloft by a modified Boeing 747-400 dubbed _Cosmic Girl_. This mission will launch the rocket over the Pacific Ocean, west of Los Angeles. Live footage is not planned by the Virgin.
Making a movie in space? Shooting out-of-this-world photographs? Space Shuttle pilot and International Space Station commander Terry Virts did this and more, before Tom Cruise! Everyday Astronaut’s writers had a chance to interview him recently about his space films and his post-space career.
The X-37B is a U.S. Space Force test vehicle. This time it will ferry the most payloads it has ever carried into orbit. It will launch on ULA’s Atlas V 501.
Imagine a simple conversion error caused a multi-million dollar mission to go puff! A video released by Everyday Astronaut this week looks at how NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999. We explore how NASA’s team of contractors made a math boo-boo that cost them the mission just as it approached Mars.
SpaceX will conduct Starship’s first launch during a 150-meter hop in Boca Chica, Texas. This follows in the footsteps of “Star Hopper” and its test flights last year. We expect the “hop” to happen in early to mid-May 2020.
NASA just announced the lunar landers for the Artemis program. To everyone’s surprise, SpaceX’s massive Starship is one of three landers NASA chose alongside Blue Origin and Dynetics.
Understandably, this is bringing up a lot of questions. Some of which we will answer in my next video/article: “Should NASA just cancel SLS and use Starship and/or other commercial launchers for Artemis?” But today I think we need to settle a lot of debates about these two rockets first. Now, more than ever, it is time we truly compare them head-to-head.
The automated Progress MS-14 spacecraft will fly to the International Space Station on a Soyuz 2.1a rocket in late April 2020. This Roscosmos ISS resupply mission will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Starlink 6 will be the sixth operational launch of SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite constellation. It will add 60 satellites to the constellation. A Falcon 9 rocket will launch this mission from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex-39A.
Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut interviews Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck about rocket reusability, Photon, and why the supply chain for satellites is so fragile.
We are fast approaching the 50th anniversary of the iconic and suspenseful Apollo 13 mission and many of us were not alive for it. This article talks about how you can relive and just exactly how this experience was created with the help from one of its own, Ben Feist!
A maiden flight of sorts. This is the first Soyuz 2.1a rocket to carry humans into space. It will transport the crewed Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft to the International Space Station. The crew consists of Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, and NASA Astronaut Christopher Cassidy. They will complement the crew of Expedition 62 and continue its work with Expedition 63.
With the AEHF-6 mission, we get to experience another spectacular Atlas V launch! Atlas V is built and launched by United Launch Alliance (ULA). For this mission an Atlas V 551 configuration will launch an Advanced Extreme High Frequency-6 (AEHF-6) satellite to Geostationary Earth Orbit for the United States military. It will aid them in fast and secure communication.
China is launching a reconnaissance satellite (one of a series all called Yaogan) to Low Earth Orbit on March 24 on a Long March 2C rocket. Long March 2C is a regular vehicle used by China from 1982 up until the present day. Yaogan (literally meaning “remote sensing satellite”) is a family of satellites in various orbits, conducting a mixture of optical, synthetic-aperture radar, and other unknown (but probably electronic intelligence gathering) sensing.
Some might find it ironic that an organization like NASA, who studies our atmosphere, is ok with rockets polluting it so much. Or isn’t it weird that Elon Musk, the same person who is pushing sustainable energy with Tesla also has a rocket company that runs on fossil fuels?
So today we are going to do a deep dive into this. We are going to see just how much of what rockets emit, go over how much different fuels and engine types pollute, then we will compare their emissions against other forms of transportation and other global polluters.
OneWeb is launching 34 of its global communication satellites to a 1,200 km polar orbit on a Soyuz rocket. Introduced in 1966, Soyuz has been the workhorse of the Soviet/Russian space program. The first launch of the Soyuz 2-1a version on November 8, 2004 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome represented a major step in the Soyuz launch vehicle’s development program. Fregat is the upper (4th) stage of Soyuz 2.1, and it first flew in the year 2000.
Postponed indefinitely because of the worldwide pandemic. We’ll update this page when more is known.
SpaceX will be launching the SAOCOM 1B and the GNOMES-1 Earth observation satellites along with the Sequoia SAR smallsat on top of their work horse rocket, the Falcon 9. The Falcon 9 is a two stage launch vehicle consisting of 9 Merlin 1-D open cycle engines on the first stage (hence the name, Falcon 9) and one vacuum optimized Merlin 1-D on the second stage. Both stages run on RP-1 and liquid oxygen (LOX). After stage separation, the booster will perform a boost-back burn, reorienting itself toward the cape, a reentry burn, slowing itself down before hitting the dense part of the atmosphere, and finally a landing burn, allowing for a soft touchdown on SpaceX’s landing pad Landing Zone-1 (LZ-1). As of now, it is unknown if SpaceX will attempt to recover the fairings with Go Ms. Tree and Go Ms. Chief.
The GLONASS-M No.60 navigation satellite is launching into a medium-Earth orbit from the Russian launch site at Plesetsk, on a Soyuz rocket. Expected to launch in March 2020.
SpaceX’s Starlink 5 mission, launching from Kennedy Space Centre, will fly 60 Starlink satellites into orbit atop of its Falcon 9 rocket. This will be the fifth operational launch of SpaceX’s near-global satellite constellation – Starlink, which aims to deliver a fast, low-latency internet service to locations where access has previously been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable.
China is sending yet another BeiDou navigation satellite into a geosynchronous orbit on their Long March 3B rocket. This will continue to build the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). Similar to the American Global Positioning System (GPS), BDS is a Chinese satellite constellation that provides users with positioning data.
SpaceX will be launching its original Dragon capsule to resupply the ISS for a final time. The spacecraft will fly on top of the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral space Force Station, Florida.
“One of Three” is Astra’s first orbital test launch of their “Rocket 3.0” launch vehicle. It will launch in early March 2020 from their launch pad at the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska. On board will be five payloads, which will be delivered to a sun synchronous orbit of 450km (280 miles). UPDATE: Mission scrubbed on March 2, 2020. Rocket 3.0’s maiden flight will be a new commercial mission to be announced mid-March 2020.
China is sending a mystery payload somewhere to space on February 19/20 (depending on your time zone) on one of their Long March 2 rockets.
Arianespace SA is a launch provider company, which is majority-owned by its parent company “ArianeGroup”, a combined undertaking between Airbus and the French group Safran. For this mission, in particular, Arianespace is getting paid by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation to put both of their satellites into an orbit only 35,786 km (22,236 miles).
Fengyun-4B is the second geostationary meteorological satellite of the Fengyun-4 satellite family with it’s predecessor FY-4A launched on December 11th 2016. FY-4B will be launched by a Long March 3B/E rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China.
SpaceX will be launching 60 satellites on top of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This will be the fourth operational launch of SpaceX’s near-global satellite constellation – Starlink, which aims to deliver a fast, low-latency broadband internet service.
Introduced in 1966, Soyuz has been the workhorse of the Soviet/Russian space program. The first launch of the Soyuz 2-1a version on November 8, 2004 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome represented a major step in the Soyuz launch vehicle’s development program. Fregat is the upper (4th) stage of Soyuz 2.1, and it first flew in the year 2000.
Russia’s Federal Space Agency is launching a Meridian military observation satellite into a highly elliptical “Molniya” orbit in order to keep an eye on things back down here on Earth. Because it’s a military satellite, not a lot is known about this space vehicle. But where it’s going to in space is really interesting – so let’s look into this.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is launching the third in a sequence of three Intelligence Gathering Satellites (IGS), called Optical 7, on an H-IIA 202 rocket provided by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).
Cygnus is returning to the International Space Station! Very soon, the Antares 230+ rocket will leap of the pad on Wallops Island located in Virginia in the United States. One of the only rockets to launch from there, it will soon be joined by Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket!
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