Every August Seradata does its usual analysis of the “runners and riders” in “The Great Space Race” between the major space nations. Here we judge each space programme on the basis of technological ability, financial and other resources, national will and, most...
The complicated multi-parachute landing system for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars landing mission in 2020 is under scrutiny after it failed a second test. The test on 5 August, of the large 35 m diameter subsonic main parachute was deemed a failure. It...
At 1930 GMT, on 6 August 2019, an Arianespace Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket lifted-off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying two communications satellites to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) drop-off point. This marks the third Ariane 5 launch of the year and it...
It might have been by design or not, but the launch of three astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) found itself becoming part of the celebrations of the Apollo 11 landings 50 years ago. With its “unlucky number” 13 (space watchers will...
The much-vaunted European Galileo navigation satellite constellation financed by the European Union (EU) and devised by the European Space Agency (ESA), is supposed to offer equivalent reliability and accuracy to the US GPS system. So there was more than a little...
The Spektr-Rontgen-Gamma X-ray astronomy observatory, better known as Spektr-RG, was launched at 1230 GMT on 13 July 2019, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam in Kazakstan. The first burn of the Block DM-03 upper stage placed it and Spektr-RG into an initial...
