Space – Page 170
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News
X-38 prototype makes longest glide flight
The X-38 small-scale prototype of the Crew Rescue Vehicle (CRV) for the International Space Station made its longest glide-flight from the highest altitude to date on 30 March. The craft was dropped from a NASA B-52 at 39,000ft (11,895m) and landed the craft by parachuting to the desert floor near ...
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Cosmonauts board Mir as USA raises money concerns
Tim Furniss/LONDON Russian cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kaleri docked with the Mir space station on 6 April after their launch on a Soyuz TM spacecraft from Baikonur on 4 April. It is the first manned mission to the ageing station since it was abandoned in August 1999. ...
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NASA shake test error damages HESSI satellite
The launch of NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) set for July has been delayed until at least January next year by a pre-flight test error at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The $65 million HESSI spacecraft was undergoing launch vibration testing on a shake table, but was shaken ...
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Glass cockpit ready for take-off
STS 101 Atlantis will be the first Space Shuttle orbiter to fly with the new Multifunction Display Subsystem (MEDS) developed by Honeywell Space Systems when its next mission is launched on 24 April. The new Boeing 777-style glass cockpit will also be added to the Columbia, Discovery and Endeavour orbiters. ...
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Feared engine fault delays Clusters
A possible generic problem with the thrusters on the four European Space Agency (ESA) Cluster satellites due to be launched by Starsem's Soyuz Fregat boosters in June and July has delayed the spacecraft's shipment to the Baikonur launch site in Khazakhstan. The flight acceptance review discovered a problem apparently ...
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Gyroscope snags lead to Compton de-orbit
NASA will de-orbit its Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite sometime after 1 June, following the failure of one of its three gyroscopes. The US space agency has decided to de-orbit the Compton, the second in NASA's Great Observatory series - which was deployed from Space Shuttle Atlantis in April 1991 ...
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Delta II launches IMAGE satellite
NASA's $154 million Imager for Magnetosphere-to-Auroral Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite was placed into orbit by a Boeing Delta II booster after launch from Vandenberg AFB, California, on 25 March. The satellite, operating from an 987 x 45,993km, 89.9°-inclination orbit, will be the first to study how the Earth's magnetic ...
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Overload 'caused Mars failures'
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC Flaws in NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" approach overloaded programme management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and contributed directly to the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, says the report by the Mars programme independent assessment team (MPIAT). The US space agency ...
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Loral wins MTSAT replacement
Space Systems/Loral has been awarded a contract by Japan's Ministry of Transport to build the replacement for the MTSAT satellite lost in the failure of the national H2 booster last year. The MTSAT 1R will be launched in 2002, but its launcher and launch site have yet to be ...