WASHINGTON — An EchoStar satellite that stopped obeying commands this summer has since been boosted into a graveyard orbit 350 kilometers above the geostationary belt, EchoStar said Sept. 6. EchoStar-3 undergoing testing prior to launch. Credit: Lockheed Martin. EchoStar-3, a 20-year-old television broadcast satellite from Lockheed Martin, stopped responding to […]
Space
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WASHINGTON — With Hurricane Irma looming off the Florida coast, SpaceX beat unfavorable weather odds Thursday morning to send the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B reusable spaceplane back into orbit for its fifth classified mission. A Falcon 9 carrying the Boeing-built X-37B hidden inside its protective shroud lifted off a 10:00 […]
WASHINGTON — NASA is continuing to examine various, potentially less expensive options for a mission to land on Jupiter’s moon Europa even after completing a recent review, postponing a call for instruments for the spacecraft. At a meeting of the Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG) Sept. 6 in La Jolla, […]
WASHINGTON — Arianespace is rescheduling the Ariane 5 launch meant for yesterday to the end of the month, having traced the source of the computer-triggered mission abort to a solid-propellant booster problem. The launch provider said Sept. 6 that an electrical equipment issue in one of the boosters interrupted the […]
Incoming radiation stormsNASA/SDO By Leah Crane The sun is having an explosive day. On the morning of 6 September, an active region on the sun belched out two huge streams of radiation. One of them was the largest such flare in two decades. These two flares were both placed in […]
Incoming radiation stormsNASA/SDO By Leah Crane The sun is having an explosive day. On the morning of 6 September, an active region on the sun belched out two huge streams of radiation. One of them was the largest such flare in over a decade. These two flares were both placed […]
WASHINGTON — As Florida braces for a hurricane expected to make landfall this weekend, the U.S. Air Force and SpaceX still hope to launch the X-37B reusable spaceplane before the storm hits. However, officials in Cape Canaveral, Florida, are forecasting only a 50 percent chance of acceptable weather for Thursday’s launch, […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Space Nation, the Finnish startup, announced plans Sept. 6 to work with NASA under a Space Act Agreement to refine the contents of the astronaut training smartphone application it plans to release in February. “We can use NASA’s expertise to make the experience better,” Kalle Vähä-Jaakkola, Space […]