December 24th, 2014
Author: 
A new story I’ve written, posted today on Space.com: After SpaceShipTwo Tragedy, How Will Virgin Galactic Return to Flight? by Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist December 24, 2014 11:42am ET http://www.space.com/28088-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-crash-aftermath.html
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The voice of the late Carl Sagan echoes through a new video produced by Space City Films. This video is sharply focused on the recent NASA test of the Orion capsule. According to Marc Havican of Space City Films: ‘I wanted to share the kickoff film with you before we release it for Christmas. This […]
Russia has launched its new heavy-weight-class launch vehicle – the Angara-A5. Liftoff took place on December 23 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in north-west Russia. The Angara rocket series consists of light, middle, and heavy weight types of boosters. The Angara-A5 rocket can hurl spacecraft up to 24 tons into a low Earth orbit and up […]
Photographs from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover clearly show sediment deposits resembling those found in modern evaporite (salty) settings at Portsmouth Island, N.C., and Bahar Alouane, Tunisia (Africa); in playa lake sediments cropping out of the Mediterranean coast in Tunisia; and in Archean salt deposits of the Pongola Supergroup in South Africa and the Dresser Formation […]
The European Space Agency (ESA) has agreed to work with the China Manned Space Agency on human spaceflight activities. ESA is also investigating partnering with Russia on two robotic Moon landing missions. In a December 11 meeting in Beijing, Wang Zhaoyao, Director of the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) and Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director of ESA, […]
You’ve seen the movie, or it’s on your holiday to-do list. But just how hard is interstellar flight? Harold White is Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate at the NASA Johnson Space Center. In a video, White discusses a couple of advanced propulsion concepts that may one day be useful for crafting […]
A new video backed by ethereal music shows NASA’s Orion capsule returning from space, through Earth’s atmosphere, and provides viewers a taste of what the vehicle experienced during its Dec. 5 flight test. The video begins 10 minutes before Orion’s 11:29 a.m. EST splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Peak heating from the friction caused by […]
SpaceNews military space reporter Mike Gruss interviews Gen. John Hyten, who took over as commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command in August. This 36-minute video, recorded Dec. 16 at the Pentagon, focuses on Hyten’s vision for the service’s space operations. •How Space Command will approach the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration •How the […]
Book Review: The Art of Space – The History of Space Art, From the Earliest Visions to the Graphics of the Modern Era by Ron Miller; Zenith Press/Quarto Publishing Group, Minneapolis, Minnesota; $35.00 (hardcover); September 2014. This is an impressive gathering of artwork, drawn together by Ron Miller, artist extraordinaire. The book is an eye-catching […]
India’s next generation booster – GSLV Mk-III – flew successfully on its first experimental flight. The rocket departed the Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota on December 18. The suborbital shot had a two-fold agenda: — Test the vehicle performance during its critical atmospheric phase of its flight carrying a non-functional cryogenic upper stage. — […]
