All Space news – Page 175
-
News
Ariane mission rate speeds up
Last month Arianespace launched its third commercial mission in fewer than 20 days. Flight V125's Ariane 44L lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, on 21 December. It carried the world's largest commercial communications satellite - the Hughes Space and Communications Galaxy XI (right), the first of its HS-702 buses, ...
-
News
Alenia wins Canadian observation contract
Alenia Aerospazio has won a C$74 million ($50 million) contract to design and build the satellite bus of Canada's new Radarsat 2 Earth observation satellite. Prime contractor McDonald Dettwiler awarded the deal to Alenia after a contest involving six US and European firms. Alenia will build the craft in 16 ...
-
News
Repairs put Terra on target
Tim Furniss/LONDON NASA has rectified major computer and antenna faults that occurred on its $1.3 billion Terra spacecraft shortly after its launch last month. The Terra, the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) programme, was launched into polar orbit on 18 December on an Atlas IIAS operated by ...
-
News
Ready for work
The European Space Agency's (ESA) X-ray Multi Mirror (XMM) space telescope has reached its operational 7,365 x 114,000km, 48h-period orbit after four thruster firings. The XMM is "behaving better in space than all our pre-launch simulations", says Dietmar Heger, ESA spacecraft operations manager. Source: Flight International
-
News
Satcoms progress
Back in the 20th century, they said people would not want telephones on airliners; that they did not wish to be contactable while they dozed in comfort or ate a fine meal. How times have changed. In the 21st century, passengers slip on virtual reality glasses and join the crew ...
-
News
Flight into the future
For the past 91 years, this magazine has reflected the shape of the industry of which it is part. In the beginning it was simply Flight, and the fledgling field of aviation was its sole purview. Now it is Flight International and the entire breadth of aerospace is its domain. ...
-
News
Opening the door to space
Propulsion concepts under study may lead to a radical change in the way in which space is accessed In the 1951 science fiction classic When World's Collide, a rocket-powered spaceship hurtles down a ramp loaded with hapless escapees from Earth, gathering speed before making a boosted take-off to escape ...
-
News
Intelligent hope
Intelligent spacecraft are still a few years away, but robots and automated systems can meanwhile play a large part in extending space exploration The spaceflight industry has just one year year left to emulate Arthur C Clarke's HAL, the spacecraft computer that became too intelligent in 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
-
News
Slow road to reusability
The shift to reusable launch vehicles will be far slower and more incremental than was once considered possible and desirable Over 30 years ago, in his film 2001: a space odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick gave us his vision of a future in which man could travel from the Earth to ...
-
News
USAF launches uprated weather satellite
The US Air Force launched a Titan II booster from Vandenberg AFB, California, on 12 December, carrying a Defense Meteorological Satellite Programme (DMSP) Block 5D3 satellite into orbit. The satellite is the first of a new generation of Lockheed Martin-built craft with larger sensors, more power, longer battery life ...
-
News
First Hughes 702 will be largest in orbit
Hughes Space and Communications' first HS-702 satellite was due to be launched on 21 December aboard an Ariane 4. The HS-702, which will be PanAmSat's Galaxy XI satellite, will be the largest commercial communications satellite deployed in orbit - equipped with 64 transponders (40 Ku-band and 24 C-band) and ...
-
News
'Real estate in space' for ISS
Spacehab and Russia's Energia plan to build the first privatised commercial module for the International Space Station (ISS). Called Enterprise, the module will be used for commercial microgravity experiments and to host a studio for television and Internet broadcasts. The latter is expected to be in conjunction with an established ...
-
News
Time travel
No-one spirited direct from 1899 to the present would find advances in surface transportation unbelievable, but aerospace would amaze them. While ships, cars and trains have seen massive gains in efficiency, they are still fundamentally the same machines. Within the past 100 years, however, powered flight has not only ...
-
News
Forecasts for 2000 - Space
Launch failures put pressure on space station project Tim Furniss/LONDON Already four years behind schedule, the fledgling International Space Station (ISS) faces a crisis in 2000. The critical launch of the Russian Zvezda service module is on hold until the Proton booster can be cleared for flight again following ...
-
News
Second Brazilian launch fails
The Brazilian Space Agency failed in its attempt to place its first national satellite into orbit aboard an indigenous booster on 11 December when the second stage of the 19.4m (64ft)-high, $7.5 million Veiculo Lancador de Satelites VLS 1 went out of control. The booster had to be destroyed at ...
-
News
Commercial launch success for Ariane 5
Tim Furniss/LONDON Arianespace's first Ariane 5 commercial flight placed the European Space Agency's (ESA) X-Ray Multi Mirror (XMM) space telescope into elliptical orbit after launch from Kourou, Guiana, on 10 December. The success of the fourth Ariane 5 flight buoyed commercial hopes for the booster after a chequered ...
-
News
Ariane launches Helios 1B
Arianespace launched an Ariane 40 booster from Kourou on 3 December, carrying the 2,500kg Helios 1B "spy satellite" into 700km sun-synchronous orbit. It was the 50th consecutive successful launch of an Ariane 4 model and the eighth successful Ariane launch for the year. The $1 billion two-satellite Helios 1 ...
-
News
Rocket science
NASA must be eagerly awaiting the New Year following its string of disasters in 1999. The US space administration, which has done so much for space exploration this century, is hardly ending it on a high note. The latest setback - the further delay of the crucial Hubble Space ...
-
News
Mission failure leaves Mars exploration in disarray
Tim Furniss/LONDON The Mars Polar Lander Mission (MPL) was declared lost on 6 December after the failure of the seventh and final attempt to pick up signals from it using the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. NASA administrator Dan Goldin says that a detailed review will be conducted of ...