June 1st, 2015
Author: 
The Planetary Society looks ready to shed a little light on the situation – a Wednesday, June 3rd deployment of LightSail’s reflective sails. Launched on May 20, LightSail will not be eye-catching visible until the sails are deployed and the best times to see the spacecraft are dusk and dawn. While LightSail is almost ready […]
Posted in 
European Space Agency (ESA) director, Jean-Jacques Dordain and Yu Tongjie, Director of the China Manned Space Agency, met May 27 to continue and promote strategic cooperation on long-term objectives and implementation steps. The two organizations are fleshing out the signing of cooperative agreements and scoping out more than a dozen specific areas of technical […]
The Orbital Perspective – Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles by Ron Garan; Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.; $27.95 (Hardcover); 2015. There have been a number of “tell-all” books authored by former space travelers. But this book tells all and more. Ron Garan spent 178 days in space, carrying […]
In outer space nobody can hear you scream – but give it time and you’ll be listening to some of the ethereal sounds used in the movie epic: 2001: A Space Odyssey Take a view and turn the volume up for this recent Progress rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station. Go to: […]
You could consider them trial balloons, in the juggernaut jargon of Washington, D.C. politics. The prospect that China may be invited to climb onboard the International Space Station seems airborne for discussion. No telling, but perhaps the overtures are just in time for the 40th anniversary of the joint Apollo-Soyuz (U.S.-Russia) mission in 1975 […]
The second flight test of NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) now will launch no earlier than 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT, or 7:30 a.m. HST) Tuesday, June 2, from the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) on Kauai, Hawaii. NASA Television coverage will begin at 10 […]
A global team of vigilant satellite watchers has spotted the Air Force’s unpiloted winged craft, the X-37B space plane, now circling the Earth on its fourth Orbital Test Vehicle mission (OTV-4). Operated by the U.S. Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, the secretive robotic spacecraft was orbited on May 20 by a United Launch Alliance Atlas […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has wheeled into position to investigate several different rock units in Marias Pass. The robot is to use a number of instruments on its arm, notes Lauren Edgar, Mars Science Laboratory science team member and research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. “We […]
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic team in Mojave, California is reporting progress in building the second SpaceShipTwo. It has been over six months since the tragic mishap involving the first SpaceShipTwo – VSS Enterprise – took the life of pilot Michael Alsbury as the craft broke apart during its 55th test flight on October […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has been characterizing the terrain and bedrock exposed in Marias Pass. The robot’s recent drive has set in motion up close study of the contact between two different types of bedrock: the underlying Pahrump unit and the overlying Stimson unit. That’s the word from Lauren Edgar, Mars Science Laboratory science team […]
