NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft is operating normally en route to the Red Planet after an on-board computer went into safe mode, possibly due to a solar flare.
The spacecraft is now in cruise mode. Two on-board instruments, the Mars radiation environment experiment and gamma ray spectrometer, have been switched on to test the thermal emission imager which has already returned pictures and temperature measurements of the Earth and moon.
Source: Flight International
China’s AVIC has secured a contract from the China Manned Space Agency to develop a winged, reusable spacecraft called Haolong.
The UK Space Command’s first owned earth observation microsatellite has been launched, providing the inaugural element of a planned space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) constellation.
Orbital launch pioneer SpaceX is being contracted by the American space agency NASA to develop a so-called “US Deorbit Vehicle” that can safely return the International Space Station to Earth via controlled re-entry.
