Space Age Bulletins | Range Tracking

Leaving The Known World

2019/01/02 by terranovabay

History was made back in 2006 when the New Horizons spacecraft blasted off bound for the first exploration of Pluto by a spacecraft from Earth. After many years of travel, New Horizons arrived at Pluto in 2015 where it successfully carried out its mission to explore the tiny world and its moon, Charon. Moving on, the far traveller was rerouted to visit a small asteroid, 2014 MU69, orbiting the solar system far out beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. Nicknamed […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: 2014 MU69, Asteroid, Kuiper Belt, New Horizons, Pluto, Ultima Thule

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NO GO For Winds Aloft

2018/12/22 by terranovabay

The launch of the U.S. Air Force’s GPS III SV01 stood down for another day on 22 December 2018 after strong upper level winds failed to die down after a front passed through. The skyline of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station shows the rocket venting gaseous oxygen during fueling as the sun rose. Optimism ran high that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would launch on what appeared to be a beautiful morning, at least on the ground, to the point […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Falcon 9, GPS III SV01, SpaceX, U.S. Air Force

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LC-39A Update

2018/12/21 by terranovabay

Views of Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center taken on 18 December 2018. SpaceX is currently in the midst of a twenty year lease on LC-39A, the historic pad from the Apollo and Space Shuttle eras now refurbished to launch Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Also launching from this pad soon, astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft that will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The white arm sticking out to the right is the Crew Access Arm […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Crew Dragon, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Kennedy Space Center, KSC, Launch Complex 39A, LC-39A, SpaceX

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All Steamed Up & Nowhere To Go

2018/12/19 by terranovabay

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket vents gaseous oxygen into the cold morning air during fueling in preparation to launch a GPS satellite for the U.S. Air Force on 18 December 2018 from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Strong upper level winds caused a delay in the count in the hopes the winds would die down. When they did, a technical problem on the first stage forced a scrub for the day. Things are on track to […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Falcon 9, GPS III SV01, Launch Complex 40, SpaceX, U.S. Air Force

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Water Landing

2018/12/10 by terranovabay

The SpaceX Falcon 9 booster for the CRS-16 mission floats in the water at Port Canaveral after being towed in earlier in the day on 7 December 2018. The booster strayed off course as it attempted to touchdown on Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A failure of one of the grid fins that help steer and stabilize the rocket during its descent failed causing the rocket to come down further to the east in the Atlantic […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, CRS-16, Falcon 9, Port Canaveral, SpaceX

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Bennu

2018/12/05 by terranovabay

After launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on 8 September 2016, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft arrived on 3 December 2018 at its destination — the asteroid Bennu. Classified as a near-Earth asteroid, Bennu is small, about 0.3 miles in diameter but its makeup dates back to the beginnings of the solar system. OSIRIS-REx will study the asteroid for about two years before landing on its surface to retrieve a sample to […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Atlas V, Bennu, NASA, Near-Earth Asteroid, OSIRIS-REx, United Launch Alliance

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Red Planet Remembrances

2018/11/28 by terranovabay

With so much attention focused on Mars these days it is worth looking back at the first two landers to successfully make it to the ground and carry out an extensive scientific program. This happened way back in the Bicentennial year of 1976 when the Viking 1 and 2 orbiters successfully navigated their way to the Red Planet before releasing their precious cargo of atomic-powered landers to descend to the surface where the two landers photographed their surroundings while digging […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Mars, National Air & Space Museum, Red Planet, Viking Lander, Viking Orbiter, Washington DC

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Ranch Saturday: STS-126

2018/11/10 by terranovabay

STS-126 on a construction, resupply, and crew transfer mission to the International Space Station carried out by the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center at 7:55 p.m. on 14 November 2008 into a sky lit bright by the full Moon. This view is the full wide-angle image of the launch, which includes the Moon blown out at right by the long time exposure capturing the streak of the Space Shuttle’s flight as seen from a cow pasture at […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Endeavour, Florida Cattle Ranch, International Space Station, ISS, Kennedy Space Center, NASA, Space Shuttle, STS-126, Treasure Hammock Ranch

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Kepler runs out of fuel

2018/11/06 by terranovabay

Spacecraft running out of fuel after many years of successful service seems to be the theme the last week or so. First it was the Dawn spacecraft out in the asteroid belt and, now, it is the Kepler spacecraft built to search for alien worlds around distant stars. I captured the launch of Kepler aboard a Delta 2 rocket from a lonely cow pasture late at night way back in March 2009 as seen below: Read more about the mission’s […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Delta 2, Kepler Space Telescope, NASA

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Dusk For Dawn

2018/11/02 by terranovabay

From the 1 November 2018 NASA press release: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system’s earliest chapter. Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn […]

Categories: Space Age Bulletins • Tags: Asteroid, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Ceres, dawn, Delta 2, NASA, Vesta

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Range Tracking

Photography by Bob Montanaro

Category Archives: Space Age Bulletins

Leaving The Known World

NO GO For Winds Aloft

LC-39A Update

All Steamed Up & Nowhere To Go

Water Landing

Bennu

Red Planet Remembrances

Ranch Saturday: STS-126

Kepler runs out of fuel

Dusk For Dawn

January 2019
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