by David Todd | Oct 12, 2016 | exploration, NASA, SpaceX, Technology
While not a noted proponent of long range space exploration (he often stood in its way), President Barack Obama has seen fit to characterise the last days of his US Presidency by strongly advocating a manned mission to orbit Mars to take place by the mid-2030s with a...
by David Todd | Oct 10, 2016 | ESA, Satellites, Technology, test
At the IAC 2016 Guadalajara, Airbus Defence and Space (Airbus DS) showed its continued interest in the problem of space debris removal by revealing the following. Firstly, the firm is planning a ESA-sponsored deorbit mission of the defunct Earth observation and...
by David Todd | Oct 5, 2016 | ESA, History, India, JAXA, NASA, Russia, Technology
IAC 2016 Guadalaraja: Mars missions and new rockets feature… and so does the rain The annual meeting of the World’s space agencies, engineers and scientists at the 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) took place in Guadalajara, Mexico, during late September...
by David Todd | Oct 4, 2016 | commercial launch services, Launches, Seradata News, Technology
Firefly Space Systems, the US-based start-up in small launch vehicles, has laid off all its staff after a funding crisis. Rumours of the firm’s problems had been circulating at the International Astronautical Congress 2016 (IAC 2016) in Guadalajara, Mexico, after its...
by Matt Wilson | Sep 30, 2016 | ESA, exploration, Satellites, Science, Technology
On 30 September 2016, at 1119 GMT the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, announced that the Rosseta probe had completed its de-orbit manoeuvre to land/crash on to the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, sending its last telemetry packet at...
by Matt Wilson | Sep 28, 2016 | Commercial human spaceflight, exploration, Personal spaceflight, SpaceX, Technology, test
On 23 September, SpaceX released a statement explaining the progress they had made in the investigation into the cause of the Falcon 9 “anomaly” in the run-up to the AMOS-6 mission. It stated that “…the Accident Investigation Team (AIT),...
