All Space articles – Page 11
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NewsSpaceShipTwo crashes during powered test flight
Virgin Galactic confirms the Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocket crashed on 31 October during the first powered test flight in nearly 10 months.
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NewsUnforgiving void: Spaceflight tragedies remembered
A sobering week in spaceflight saw the first in-flight fatality in a commercial space programme, as Virgin Galactic lost a test pilot with the breakup of its SpaceShipTwo over the Nevada desert, along with a spectacular but non-fatal launch failure of an uncrewed International Space Station resupply mission. After that ...
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News
Lufthansa Technik adds SOFIA, zero gravity to special missions roster
Lufthansa Technik has added weightlessness and flying telescopes to the portfolio of special missions of large commercial aircraft now inducted in its overhaul or modification hangars.
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News'Stay with the Station', NASA boss urges international partners
NASA administrator Charles Bolden today called on Europe and the UK to stand behind their financial commitments to the International Space Station and work with the USA to keep it flying through 2020 and even 2024 – because the orbiting outpost is humankind’s “springboard” to Mars.
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OpinionOPINION: Will US have to look for an all-American alternative to Russian rockets?
War, as the saying goes, is the domain of chance. Business is usually more friendly to calculated manoeuvres, but when actual fighting intervenes all bets are off.
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NewsIndia triumphs with Mars arrival in busy week at red planet
India has joined a very exclusive club of spacefaring nations, with the successful arrival of its Mars Orbiter Mission. Named Mangalyaan – “Mars craft” in Sanskrit – India’s orbiter spent 300 days enroute and will now be readied for its scientific mission, to study the planet’s atmosphere and geology with ...
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AnalysisANALYSIS: Virgin Galactic 'close to reaching space'
Virgin Galactic has formally backed away from its pledge to put its first fare-paying passengers into suborbital space by the close of 2014 – but has made a very public declaration that suborbital operations from its purpose-built spaceport in New Mexico will begin in early 2015.
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NewsBoeing, SpaceX win NASA contracts for ISS space taxi
NASA has tapped Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Falcon9/Crew Dragon spacecraft for transporting crews to the International Space Station (ISS) from 2017.
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AnalysisANALYSIS: Galileo 'on track' despite launch trouble
Europe’s bid to establish its own satellite navigation system suffered a setback with the failure of a Soyuz launcher to put into their assigned orbits the fifth and sixth spacecraft in what is to be a 30-satellite constellation. But both the European Space Agency and European Commission remain confident that ...
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NewsZephyr 7 undergoes testing to receive UK military registration
A recent long endurance test of Airbus Defence and Space’s Zephyr 7 high altitude pseudo satellite (HAPS) has resulted in the system being the first of its type to receive UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) military registration.
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AnalysisANALYSIS: ATV era opens final chapter with 'flawless' space station docking
The International Space Station marked the end of an era on Tuesday, 12 August 2014 with a “flawless” arrival by the fifth and final resupply flight in ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle programme
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News
Steering a rover from orbit? No problem now, says ESA
When astronauts finally one day arrive at an alien world, they might want to send a robot advance party down to check out the surface before committing themselves to landing – but controlling a rover from space is far from straightforward, as the orbiting driver would only have intermittent line ...
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News
Rosetta arrival marks "new chapter" in solar system exploration
The European Space Agency this week declared open a “new chapter in Solar System exploration” when its Rosetta spacecraft achieved the first-ever rendezvous with a comet.
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News
Eight sites shortlisted for UK spaceport
In shortlisting possible locations for a spaceport, the UK Space Agency looked for “remote” places where the “uninvolved general public” would be at minimal risk from accidents, where operations within segregated airspace would be feasible, where a 3,000m (10,000ft)-plus runway could be accommodated and which were on the coast, where ...
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NewsFARNBOROUGH: UK-FAA axis looks to nail space tourism regulation
The UK is laying the groundwork for a commercial space transportation industry by opening a consultation on a site for a possible spaceport and looking across the Atlantic for guidance on how to regulate the nascent business of ferrying passengers to space.
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News
FARNBOROUGH: Surrey nanotech specialist claims world record for blackest coating
How black is black? Blacker than it used to be and very nearly as black as it can get, according to the UK materials scientists behind a carbon nanotube coating they claim absorbs a world record 99.96% of incident radiation.
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NewsFARNBOROUGH: UK spaceport "by 2018"
Hot on the heels of a triumphant week for home-grown satellite technology, the UK government is set to announce on Tuesday a plan to host the first-ever launches from UK soil – with the establishment of a spaceport by 2018.
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NewsFARNBOROUGH: Forget orders - M&A is the measure of a robust industry
Farnborough watchers love to count orders, which is understandable; the event, after all, is an “air show” – a comparatively glamorous category of trade exhibitions at which aircraft (as opposed to, say, machine tools or agricultural equipment) are placed on display in hope of attracting buyers.
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NewsFARNBOROUGH: Comet's tail is big story of ESA's year
Comets probably aren’t the bad luck omens or even harbingers of doom that many early civilisations assumed – but, just to be sure, a very close eye is being kept on the snappily-named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it hurtles towards the Sun.
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Analysis
ANALYSIS: UKSA's bold vision is to be the most modern of space agencies
With a wider focus than merely launchers and airlocks, the UK Space Agency is keen to cement its position as a progressive force in humanity's exploration of the cosmos