SpaceX has pulled of a monumental feat in aerospace engineering by landing its upgraded first-stage Falcon 9 rocket booster at Cape Canaveral, Florida, while successfully putting 11 Orbcomm communications satellites on orbit. In the 20th space flight for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and 6th launch this year, the company won over its doubters by reigniting the first-stage booster stage upon re-en...
ST Aerospace, with an established global track record on aircraft maintenance and modifications, now extends its maintenance support from military forces, commercial airlines to the world’s first commercial spaceline. Its US affiliate company VT San Antonio Aerospace will be providing a series of D-level heavy maintenance checks on the Virgin Galactic’s Boeing 747-400 aircraft –...
Richard Branson is finding a new use for an old Virgin Atlantic jumbo jetliner: to fling rockets to orbit. Virgin Galactic, the commercial space company founded by the billionaire, plans to send small rockets inflight from the Boeing 747-400 nicknamed "Cosmic Girl" that it purchased from Branson's airline. Branson is among the entrepreneurs vying to shake up the US$6 billion co...
The European Space Agency’s Vega light rocket has made its sixth successful launch, from Kourou, French Guiana with a payload to test high-precision measurement technologies scientists hope will pave the way for the detection of so-far undiscovered gravitational waves. The 1h 45min flight VV06 put the Airbus Defence & Space-built LISA Pathfinder into an elliptic Earth orbit, from whic...
Turkish Airlines has extended the suspension of its flights to and from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh until January 1, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. “Because of security issues over the airfield of Sharm El Sheikh our flights has been mutually canceled till 1st January 2016,” the statement reads. The company suspende...
Commercial spaceflight start-up Blue Origin has achieved a historic first by vertically landing and recovering the launcher stage of the New Shepard suborbital system after delivering a payload to space. The successful recovery mission comes seven months after the maiden flight of the rocket, which led to an unsuccessful recovery of the vertical launcher. Several attempts by Elon Musk’...
Russian Earth remote sensing satellite constellation will be expanded to 15 spacecraft by 2020; it will help strengthen the country’s position at the global market in the geo-information products and services segment. It was stated at the plenary session of the XIII All-Russian open conference “Contemporary issues in the area of Earth remote sensing”, which was held on November 2...
NASA has placed an order with private spaceflight company SpaceX for a manned mission to the International Space Station in 2017. The Dragon spacecraft can carry up to seven people in lower Earth orbit. "The authority to proceed with Dragon's first operational crew mission is a significant milestone in the Commercial Crew Program and a great source of pride for the entire SpaceX team,&...
International Launch Services (ILS), a subsidiary of the Russian Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, has signed a contract with the international satellite communications organisation Intelsat on five launches of the Proton-M carrier rockets until 2023 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Khrunichev Centre’s press service reported on Wednesday. "International Launch Servi...
British newspaper readers last week could be excused for believing that humankind is poised on the cusp of a new Concorde era – indeed, an era of Concorde on steroids. As the Daily Mail put it with typically breathless excitement: “Could we soon fly London to Sydney in FOUR HOURS? BAE invests in 4,000mph hybrid rocket jet engine firm”. And, the Mail went on: “Flights fro...
Federal officials say a plane carrying 78 people was forced to abort a takeoff at Los Angeles International Airport when a car made a wrong turn onto a runway. The Federal Aviation Administration says the incident shortly before noon Tuesday involved a Compass Airlines twin-engine jet bound for Kansas City. The Los Angeles Times reports an alarm sounded in the control tower when a...
Construction of Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo is progressing quickly but cautiously with technicians fitting the main oxidiser tank into the suborbital spaceplane in preparation for its maiden flight, which is expected “soon”. This second vehicle carries the hopes of Richard Branson’s space tourism venture after the disintegration of the first spacecraft almost o...