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 America’s next ‘spaceplane’ recently cleared another key NASA review towards flight, checking off the next milestone on Sierra Nevada Corp’s (SNC) journey to launching their first Dream Chaser atop a ULA Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida in 2021. Continue reading Dream Chaser Clears Another NASA Review for Inaugural 2021 Launch  The landing of the Mars 2020 rover on Feb. 18, 2021 may still be almost two years away, but NASA’s newest Mars rover has already “touched down” a couple times in successful test simulations. The tests, with many more to come, will prepare engineers for the actual landing day, which like any Mars rover or lander mission, will be brought with anxiety and suspense as the spacecraft begins its descent through the thin atmosphere. Continue reading Engineers Conduct Successful First Tests of Mars 2020 Rover  Close-up observations of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu have revealed many surprises, NASA announced today during the 50th Lunar and Planetary Conference in Houston. These include particle plumes and a much more rugged surface than had been anticipated. Continue reading OSIRIS-REx Finds Plumes and Other Surprises on Asteroid Bennu  Discovery rockets into orbit on STS-29 in March 1989, three decades ago, this month. Photo Credit: NASA Flying in space, remembered astronaut John Blaha—who made the first of his five missions, 30 years ago, this month—vanished in the flicker of an eye. On 13 March 1989, Blaha and his four crewmates launched aboard shuttle Discovery on the relatively “vanilla” STS-29 flight to deliver a major NASA communications satellite into space. Seated in the pilot’s seat, alongside future Johnson Space Center (JSC) Director Mike Coats, Blaha was joined by Mission Specialists Bob Springer, Jim Buchli and Jim Bagian. Most of the crew had been recycled from a pre-Challenger assignment to a flight which might have seen the first citizens of Indonesia and the UK to travel into space. Continue reading Remembering Shuttle Discovery’s STS-29 Mission, 30 Years On  The U.S. Air Force WGS-10 satellite headed to orbit atop the penultimate single-stick United Launch Alliance Delta-IV rocket on March 15, 2019. Photo Credit: John Studwell / AmericaSpace Dedicated to the memory of a former electrical installations lead for the Delta IV Program—30-year aerospace industry veteran Kurt Huschle—the second-to-last “single-stick” United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV booster roared smoothly to orbit this evening (Friday, 15 March), laden with a critical military communications asset to support U.S. and allied warfighters across the globe. Continue reading ULA’s Penultimate Delta IV Lofts WGS-10 to Orbit for USAF  Soyuz MS-12 roars aloft from Gagarin’s Start, into post-midnight skies at Baikonur. Photo Credit: NASA/Twitter Two U.S. astronauts rode into orbit, shoulder-to-shoulder with a Russian commander earlier today, when Soyuz MS-12 speared smoothly aloft from Site 1/5—the historic “Gagarin’s Start”—at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA flyers Nick Hague and Christina Koch were joined by seasoned cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin for the on-time liftoff and are now embarking on a six-hour and four-orbit “fast rendezvous” to reach the International Space Station (ISS). By a strange quirk of coincidence, today (3/14) happens to be “Pi Day”, and the mission of Ovchinin, Hague and Koch set off at 3:14 p.m. EDT Thursday (12:14 a.m. local time Friday). “Liftoff on #PiDay,” tweeted Hague in the hours before launch. “An engineer’s dream come true. Next stop, @Space_Station.” The trio are targeted to dock at the station’s Earth-facing (or “nadir”) Rassvet module at 9:07 p.m. EDT. Continue reading New Crew Launched Aboard Soyuz MS-12, En-Route to Space Station  Friday’s mission will be the first flight of the Delta IV Medium+ (5,4) since March 2017, which delivered the most recent Wideband Global Satcom to orbit. Photo Credit: Alan Walters / AmericaSpace The Space Coast will be greeted by a rare spectacle on Friday evening (15 March), when United Launch Alliance (ULA) lofts the second-to-last member of its “single-stick” Delta IV fleet of boosters from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The almost-six-decade-old pad—which last saw service to launch NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in August 2018—will reverberate to more than 1.8 million pounds (810,000 kg) of thrust from the Common Booster Core (CBC) and four strap-on solid-fueled rockets of the Delta IV Medium+ (5,4). Liftoff of ULA’s second mission of 2019 is scheduled for 6:56 p.m. EDT, at the opening of a 129-minute “window”, which closes at 9:05 p.m. Assuming a successful launch, the tenth Wideband Global Satcom (WGS-10) satellite will be released into supersynchronous orbit about 42 minutes into the flight, setting it up for a minimum 14 years supporting U.S. and allied warfighters. In keeping with tradition, this particular Delta IV vehicle is dedicated to a late ULA employee; in this case, Kurt Huschle, who held critical roles during a 30-year aerospace career and was the electrical installations lead for the Delta IV. Continue reading Penultimate Single-Stick Delta IV to Launch USAF WGS-10 on Friday  The Soyuz MS-12 crew of (from left) Alexei Ovchinin, Nick Hague and Christina Koch during their flight to Baikonur last month. Photo Credit: NASA Five months after an abortive attempt to reach the International Space Station (ISS), Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and NASA’s Nick Hague will have a second chance to get to the sprawling orbital outpost on Thursday, 14 March, when they again launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The pair originally flew aboard Soyuz MS-10 last October, but their mission was aborted during ascent and—thanks to the superb functionality of the launch escape system—the two men were plucked away from their failing Soyuz-FG booster and achieved a safe landing on the Kazakh steppe. With just 154 days having passed between their two flights, Thursday’s mission will mark the shortest interval in Russian spaceflight history between two launches by the same crew, pipping the harrowing 1983 experience of Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Gennadi Strekalov by just a few days. Continue reading Soyuz MS-12 Crew Primed for Thursday Launch to Space Station  Tropical Storm Owen vividly backdrops Columbia’s silhouetted payload bay, aft bulkhead and vertical stabilizer during STS-62. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de A quarter-century ago, this week, five astronauts aboard shuttle Columbia sailed through a mission which their launch announcer had earlier described as “the cutting edge of microgravity research”. STS-62 Commander John Casper, Pilot Andy Allen and Mission Specialists Pierre Thuot, Sam Gemar and Marsha Ivins spent 14 days in March 1994 overseeing a virtual miniature space station—with materials and space technology research, medical and biological experiments, solar physics instrumentation and robotics—in the shuttle’s cavernous payload bay and middeck. And for Ivins in particular, it would offer an early glimpse of the technology that she would one day use to install the U.S. Destiny lab onto the International Space Station (ISS). Continue reading ‘Cutting Edge’: Remembering STS-62, 25 Years On  Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques at work with U.S. space suits in the Quest airlock aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Photo Credit: NASA As the world observes International Women’s Day today (Friday, 8 March), we are reminded not only of the past accomplishments of female spacefarers—including Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space; Svetlana Savitskaya, the first woman to perform a spacewalk; Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space mission; and Peggy Whitson, the first woman to lead a space station expedition—but of the promise of future achievements, as-yet unrealized. In the coming weeks, NASA plans three periods of Extravehicular Activity (EVA) outside the International Space Station (ISS), involving four first-time spacewalkers from the United States and Canada. On the second of those three EVAs, on 29 March, U.S. astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch will make history by performing the first-ever all-female spacewalk. And according to NASA, Koch may remain aboard the station to achieve the second-longest single mission ever performed by a woman. Continue reading On International Women’s Day, NASA Looks Forward to First All-Female EVA in Late March; Koch Tapped for Longer ISS Stay |
 Next Launch WGS-10 on a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral AFB, FL scheduled for: 16 Mar 19 at 0:26 GMT 15 Mar 19 at 8:26pm Eastern 
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