All Space articles – Page 177
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Starsem completes sixth Globalstar satellite launch
Starsem launched another four Globalstar mobile communications satellites on a Soyuz Ikar booster from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on 22 November. There are 48 Globalstar satellites in space and a final launch of four by a Delta II in January will complete the constellation, with four in-orbit spares available. Replacements will ...
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Cluster II enters testing
Andrew Doyle/MUNICH Dornier Satellitensysteme (DSS)has completed the fourth and final satellite for the European Space Agency's (ESA)c300 million ($309 million) Cluster II mission and handed the spacecraft over to Munich-based Industrieanlagen Betriebsgesellschaftfor testing. The satellites are to be orbited in pairs by Russian Soyuz boosters next June and ...
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China conducts further tests in preparation for manned flight
Tim Furniss/LONDON China conducted the first unmanned test of its Shenzhou spacecraft on 20 November. The launch from Jiuquan was also the first to use the Long March 2F (LM2F) booster. China is planning further unmanned test flights of the Shenzhou before launching with a two-man crew on board. The ...
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Battery lost
The International Space Station's (ISS) Russian Zarya control module is operating on two-thirds of normal battery power after battery number two, one of five, failed to discharge. Battery number one, which failed earlier, is due to be replaced by the STS101 Atlantis crew in March. A second battery change could ...
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NASA awaits Mars attempt
NASA's Mars Polar Lander (MPL) is due to touch down on the Red Planet's south pole on 3 December. NASA is anxious for a successful landing after the failure of the sister ship - the Mars Climate Orbiter - on 23 September. The 1.06m (3ft 6in) tall, 580kg (1,270lb) ...
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Proton grounding adds to ISS delay
The International Space Station (ISS) is facing more delays following Russia's decision to keep its Proton booster grounded until at least March, while improvements are made to the second stage powerplant after two failures in four months. The grounding means that the Russian Zvezda service module for the ISS will ...
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Mars upgrades
Mars upgrades The European Space Agency will upgrade two of the instruments that will fly on the Mars Express orbiter in 2003, to help make up for some of the science activities lost by the recent failure of the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter. An infrared channel will be added to ...
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Spy for hire
IAI's EROS satellite will help Israel to catch up in the space market Arie Egozi/TEL AVIV Time sharing is usually associated with hotel rooms in exotic resorts. From early next year, the concept will also be linked with observation satellites for civil and military missions. The first Earth remote ...
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Final Mir, first ISS crews are named
Two Russian cosmonaut crews have been named for the final mission to the Mir space station to be launched in February 2000. The prime crew is rookie Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kaleri, a Mir veteran. A two-person back-up crew has been named as Salizham Sharipov - who flew on ...
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Hardware losses top $2 billion
Tim Furniss/LONDON The $300 million-plus failure of Japan's H2 booster and a communications satellite on 15 November has brought to $2 billion the total value of space hardware lost this year. There have been six launch failures and five in-orbit satellite failures, plus satellite in-orbit anomalies. Despite the ...
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Cold may cripple Mars Lander's engine
Tim Furniss/LONDON The NASA panel investigating the loss of the $327 million Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) has uncovered a potential problem with the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), which is due to touch down on 3 December. NASA has found that temperatures as low as -20°C could affect the performance of ...
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Comet chaser
Europe's Rosetta mission will be the first to land a craft on a comet Tim Furniss/LONDON The European Space Agency (ESA) will make history in 2012 when its 100kg Rosetta makes the first soft landing of a spacecraft on a comet. The Rosetta mission launch is due in January 2003, ...
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Starsem is cleared for Baikonur
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC Franco-Russian venture Starsem has been cleared to launch a Soyuz booster from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, this month. The launch had been jeopardised when the Kazakh Government banned all launches from Baikonur after the 27 October Proton booster failure - the second recently. Starsem president Jean-Yves ...
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Hyper-X test date put back to May
Flight testing of the first hypersonic X-43A air-breathing free-flight vehicle has slipped by around three months to the end of next May. The delay follows the later-than-expected arrival of the experimental craft at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards AFB, California. The 3.6m (12ft)-long X-43A is a key part ...
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Hubble mission aims for December
Space Shuttle mission STS 103/Discovery has been cleared for launch on 6 December, to complete the third service of the Hubble Space Telescope. The spacecraft stack was scheduled to be rolled to launch pad 39B on 13 November. NASA replaced the orbiter's main engine number three in the Vehicle ...
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X-33's first flight may be delayed until 2001
The maiden flight of the Lockheed Martin/NASA X-33 sub-orbital technology demonstrator for future single-stage-to-orbit vehicles is likely to be delayed from next July until early 2001. The hold-up is due to damage to the demonstrator's liquid hydrogen (LH) tanks. The outer wall of one of the X-33's two ...
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Beagle 2 Mars lander gets ESA go ahead
The European Space Agency (ESA) has given the go-ahead for the UK to build the Beagle 2 lander, which is scheduled to ride aboard the space agency's Mars Express orbiter when it launches in June 2003. The UK Beagle team, which is led by the country's Open University and ...
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Ikonos returns quality images from Space
Steve Nichols/DUBAI If you want a bird's eye view of Dubai, try visiting Space Imaging Middle East (E820). The company is showing some of the first high-resolution photographic images of the United Arab Emirates, taken by the recently-launched Ikonos satellite. Ikonos is the world's first commercial high-resolution imaging satellite, circling ...
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SSTL tests electric Resistojet in orbit
The UK's Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) has test-fired the first electric resistojet orbit control thruster to be used in space by a Western European country. It took place aboard the SSTL UoSAT 12 satellite. A resistojet is a form of electric propulsion where a fluid, such as water or ...
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ISS suffers further delays
Tim Furniss/LONDON The International Space Station (ISS) project has been dealt a new blow with the delay of the next Space Shuttle assembly mission, STS101 Atlantis. NASA has moved it from February next year to no earlier than 16 March. This comes after the Russian Proton launch failure ...