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At the end of the first orbital test flight for its 164-foot Starship, SpaceX envisions a reentry into the atmosphere at speeds approaching Mach 25, or 19, 000 miles per hour, followed by 15 minutes of hypersonic flight. During this time, the spacecraft will hurtle sideways, generating tremendous heat before adjusting to an upright position for a "soft " rocket-powered ocean landing 62 miles north of Kauai. It will sink in the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility, according to plans for the historic flight, and join dozens of warships that have gone down over past decades during Navy "sink exercises...

Launchspace Technologies Corp. proposes sending platforms as large as football fields into low Earth orbit to sweep up space debris. The platforms also would be equipped with sensors to help U.S. government agencies detect and track orbiting satellites and debris. Launchspace Technologies' patented plan to clean up debris calls for sending Debris Collection Units into equatorial orbit to capture debris ranging in size from 1 millimeter to five centimeters. ... To keep debris from ruining the most desirable orbits, Launchspace Technologies proposes sending Debris Collection Units with replaceable, mesh Debris Impact Pads into orbits shaped and synchronized to clean up...

The long-awaited launch of an Orbital ATK Antares rocket carrying cargo to the International Space Station today has been delayed until Monday, a 24-hour slip, due to a glitch with ground support equipment, NASA officials said Sunday (Oct. 16). Antares is now scheduled to launch Monday (Oct. 17) at 7:40 p.m. EDT (2340 GMT) from Pad-0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility here. "Today's launch of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket is postponed 24 hours due to a ground support equipment (GSE) cable that did not perform as expected during the pre-launch check out," Keith Koehler, a...

Engineers erected a commercial Antares rocket vertical on its launch pad on Virginia’s Eastern Shore Friday, positioning the 13-story booster for liftoff Sunday night with more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments for the International Space Station. With a Cygnus supply ship enclosed in its nose cone, the rocket rolled out of its Horizontal Integration Facility on a self-propelled transporter starting around 5:12 p.m. EDT (2112 GMT) Thursday for the mile-long journey to launch pad 0A on Wallops Island, Virginia. Orbital ATK’s ground team secured the rocket after reaching the seaside launch pad at dusk, then hoisted the booster...

A Nasa rocket due to be visible across the East Coast on its way to the International Space Station has blown up on the launchpad. The rocket exploded six seconds after lift-off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island in Virginia. Engineers said there were no problems reported before the launch, and say they have 'no early indications' of what went wrong. 'A mishap has occurred. we have lost the vehicle,' controllers said seconds after blast off.

...[A]n Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket carrying a commercially developed cargo ship blasted off Thursday and climbed into orbit, kicking off the company's first operational flight to deliver supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.... The two-stage 130-foot-tall Antares rocket, equipped with modified first-stage engines left over from the Soviet moon program, roared to life at 1:07:05 p.m. EST (GMT-5) and quickly lifted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, climbing away atop a torrent of fiery exhaust as Earth's rotation carried the pad into the plane of the space station's orbit. Accelerating smoothly as it consumed its first stage...

Rocket: Minotaur 5 Payload: LADEE Launch date: September 6, 2013 Launch time: 11:27 p.m. EDT (0327 GMT on 7th) Site: Launch Pad 0B, Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport City/State: Wallops Island, Va. SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2013 UPDATE Technicians lifted a NASA moon probe on top of a Minotaur rocket on Saturday, crowning an eight-story, five-stage booster set for an historic liftoff from Virginia on Sept. 6. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, a $280 million mission to measure the dynamics of the moon's tenuous atmosphere, was hoisted atop the Minotaur launcher on pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's...

A private rocket NASA is counting on to make robotic cargo flights to the International Space Station achieved a key milestone today (Oct. 1), as its first stage rolled out to its Virginia launchpad for the first time. The first stage of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket arrived today at its pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), which is located at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia. The move marks the beginning of on-pad preparations for a series of important trials with Antares that will take place over the next few months, Orbital officials said. The company aims to...

In an age of rogue regimes and pre-emptive war, states developing clandestine nuclear programs know better than to leave them in plain sight. Anxious to ward off an American or Israeli attack, Iran, for example, appears to have buried its uranium-enrichment halls under 30 feet of earth and concrete. No doubt, canny proliferators will soon dig even deeper and better-armored holes. But if they dig deeper, we can always go higher: hence the call for the “Rods From God.” More properly known as hypervelocity rod bundles, these weapons would simply be slender solid tungsten cylinders, 20 or 30 feet long...

A new U.S. launcher based on strategic missile hardware made its successful suborbital debut April 22, but the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) lost contact with the payload, an experimental hypersonic vehicle, soon thereafter, the agency said April 23. DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2 was the first in a series of flight experiments meant to demonstrate technologies that could be the foundation for the United States’ next long-range conventional missile. It was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop a Minotaur 4 rocket. Built by Lockheed Martin Corp., the HTV-2 craft was supposed to glide over...

NASA readied the launch early Tuesday of a satellite that will produce the first complete map of the Earth's human and natural sources of carbon dioxide, CO2, the gas most closely linked to climate change. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, was scheduled to be launched at 0951 GMT (1:51 am) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on board the Taurus XL rocket built by Orbital Science Corp., NASA said in a statement posted Monday on its website. It would be the first time NASA has used a Taurus rocket. NASA said the observatory would map the geographic distribution...

NASA Awards Space Station Commercial Resupply Services Contracts To SpaceX and Orbital WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded two contracts -- one to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and one to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif. -- for commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. At the time of award, NASA has ordered eight flights valued at about $1.9 billion from Orbital and 12 flights valued at about $1.6 billion from SpaceX. These fixed-price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts will begin Jan. 1, 2009, and are effective through Dec. 31, 2016. The contracts each call...

Australia-based Orbital Corporation introduced its new FlexDI modular direct injection fuel system technology at the 5th International Clean Vehicle Exhibition and Forum in Beijing. Polaris Industries is the first customer to go into series production with FlexDI, applying it in the Patriot Engine.

Sometime this year, an old Russian spacesuit — tossed overboard from the international space station this month — will make its final, fiery dive into the Earth's atmosphere. Within seconds, Suit-Sat — alias Ivan Ivanovich, alias NORAD Object No. 28933 — will be toast and the U.S. Space Surveillance Network will have one less piece of space junk to surveil. Ditto for Object No. 28934, aka Ivan's glove, which broke off when the suit was shoved out the station's air lock. At the moment, 9,233 pieces of space junk are being tracked in Earth orbit. But that tally only covers...

Orbital Sciences has successfully launched the XSS-11 satellite aboard a Minotaur I rocket. The XSS-11 is an experimental small satellite for the US Air Force designed to test technologies that could allow quick visual examinations or maintenance of spacecraft in orbit. The mission originated on Monday, April 11, 2005, at 9:35 a.m. (EDT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA (VAFB) when the Minotaur rocket ignited its first stage motor and lifted-off from its West Coast launch site. Approximately 12 minutes after launch, the XSS-11 satellite was inserted into its targeted orbit of approximately 850 kilometers above the Earth. Yesterday's mission...

Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp. announced Monday that it has joined a Lockheed Martin led "all-star" team of aerospace industry innovators competing to design and build NASA's new Crew Exploration Vehicle. Orbital's teaming agreement with Lockheed Martin continues the company's history as a key participant in the development of a next-generation human space transportation system. In chronological order, Orbital has contributed to NASA's Space Transportation Architecture Studies, the Space Launch Initiative, and, most recently, the Orbital Space Plane program, all of which have led to the decision by NASA to develop and build the vehicle.

Orbital Sciences said Tuesday that it successfully flight-tested the GQM-163A "Coyote" Supersonic Sea-Skimming Target (SSST) system for the United States Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) on May 18, 2004. The flight test, conducted at the Navy's missile test range in southern California, is part of a series of flights Orbital will conduct under the company's SSST Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) contract from NAVAIR. Orbital was awarded the EMD contract in 2000 to meet the Navy's requirement for an affordable SSST to simulate supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles for fleet training and weapon systems research, development, test and evaluation. The GQM-163A...

Why We Must SUSTAIN Human Spaceflight by Jeff Wright Los Angeles - Oct 13, 2003 Very quietly, a bold new vision for space is taking place within the halls of the Pentagon. And the Branch of the service behind this wonderful new development is none other that the United States Marine Corps. Hoo-RAH! To quote a a recent Universal Need Statement (UNS): "The Marine Corps needs a capability to transport small mission-tailored units thru space from any point on the globe to a contingency at any other point on the globe within minutes...This includes a need for flexibility, such as...

8/18/2003 - VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) -- A ground-based interceptor prototype booster successfully launched from here Aug. 16, supporting the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program of the Missile Defense Agency. The booster, designed by Orbital Sciences Corp., is a three-stage system based on hardware that has flown 45 times on missions carried out by the Pegasus, Taurus and Minotaur space launch vehicles. The mission’s objectives are to demonstrate the vehicle's silo-launch capabilities, verify the vehicle design and flight characteristics, and confirm the planned performance of its guidance, control and propulsion systems, according to officials. This is the second test...

Galaxy quest Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has launched his own space programme and wants to send tourists into orbit. He is not alone - entrepreneurs across the United States are reaching for the sky. What is it with rich men and rockets? By Steve Connor 05 August 2003 For a supposedly hi-tech company involved in exploring the futuristic notion of space tourism, it is surprisingly difficult to make contact with anyone at Blue Origin's headquarters in Seattle. The firm is not listed in the local telephone directory and its website offers no other means of contact - unless...