SpaceX launches first planned Transporter rideshare mission of 2022 carrying over 100 satellites
The SpaceX Transporter-3 rideshare mission launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1525 GMT, 13 January carrying over 100 satellites. The launch was targeted to deliver its payloads into a circa~ 525 km, sun-synchronous LEO (inclined at 97.6 degrees). The mission...
Russian cosmonauts make spacewalk to work on Prichal module
Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, current commander of Expedition 66, and Peytr Dubrov, made a spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS) on 19 January 2022 to prepare the recently docked Prichal module to accept new Progress and new Soyuz crew carrying...
ESA confirms that Sentinel 1B’s radar is still knocked out by power issue
Sentinel-1B, a key Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite of the ESA/EU Copernicus Earth observation and monitoring programme, has failed in orbit. On 23 December, its C-band SAR Interferometric radar mission to be used for environmental monitoring was shut down...
Long March 2D puts mysterious Shiyan-13 into orbit (Corrected)
A Chinese Long March 2D (CZ-2D) rocket built by SAST (Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology) and operated by the quasi-military CASC (China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp) put Shiyan-13 - officially a technology test satellite - into orbit at 0235 GMT on...
Virgin Orbit’s air-launched LauncherOne has third launch success in a row
The Virgin Orbit launch provider was celebrating its third launch success in a row of its air-launched LauncherOne rocket. The "Stage Zero" Boeing 747 (Cosmic Girl) carrier aircraft, with the LaunchOne rocket slung under the port wing, took off from the Mojave Air...
Intelsat orders two further software-defined GEO sats, but this time from Thales
Intelsat has ordered two geostationary (GEO) satellites with new "software-defined payloads" from Thales Alenia Space (TAS). The contract announced on 12 January outlined the two spacecraft, to be known as Intelsat 41 and 44, and are to be based on the new TAS Space...
Tianzhou-2 freighter is remotely undocked and redocked with Chinese Space Station
Taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) aboard the Chinese Space Station (CSS) conducted a manual remote undocking involving the unberthing from the forward port of the Tianhe-1 module at circa 2150 GMT on 7 January 2021 and moving it using the station's robot arm first...
SpaceX kicks off 2022 with a Starlink launch from Florida
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket at 2149 GMT on 6 January 2022 from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. The vehicle was carrying 49 Starlink satellites to continue the growth of this constellation. These satellites are destined for the 53.2 degree...
Arianespace collects launch orders for eight Galileo satellites and for a pair of Italian PLATiNO satellites
Arianespace got the year off to a good start with the announcement of the ESA and European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) confirmation of for launches to carry eight additional Galileo satellites. Arianespace will launch the first two satellites in later...
2021 Launch Year: A new record for both orbital rocket and satellite launch totals in a year
The final score of orbital launches in 2021 was 146 launch attempts - record number of launch attempts since space launch history began with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The previous record of 139 orbital launches was back in 1967. The "winner" in terms of number...