spaceflight Tag

SpaceX is going to the moon. In 2018, Elon Musks enterprise wants to be the first private company to not only put people in space, but also to take them beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) for the first time in 45 years. The plans are very exciting, but there’s still a lot of work to be done before the mission will take off. When SpaceX says it’s “going back to the moon”, it doesn’t mean quite something similar to the Apollo-missions (at least the landing-missions from Apollo 11 and up).Read More

SpaceX has rounded off its investigation of the rocket that exploded somewhere last year. The company is back on track to ‘Return To Flight’, but what exactly happened with the Falcon 9 that blew up during a static fire test? What happened exactly? On September 1st, 2016, a Falcon 9-rocket exploded during a routine test. The rocket was scheduled to lift off 2 days later, carrying the Israeli made Amos-6 communications satellite. But during the static-fire engine test (a routine procedure before SpaceX-launches), a huge explosion destroyed the top halfRead More

There’s plenty to do about the ISS, the permanently manned space station that holds astronauts from all corners of the Earth. But few people know there’s a second space station currently in orbit around the Earth. The Chinese Tiangong station might not be manned, but the country has big plans for the future of the habitat. Tiangong is China’s own independent access to space, something the Chinese have aspired since astronauts Yang Liwei’s first flight in 2003. Heavenly Palace The station is called Tiangong-1, which roughly translates to ‘Palace ofRead More

Where SpaceX has been trying to land its Falcon 9-rocket for years now, suddenly there’s a company that claims to have pulled that off. But that comparison is wrong. Blue Origin has not pulled off what SpaceX has been doing. Here’s why. To determine that difference, we have take a quick look at both companies and what they’re trying to do. SpaceX (founded by Tesla-owner Elon Musk) is a company that offers launches aboard their trusted Falcon 9-rocket. These launches are offered to both private companies like telecom-providers to launchRead More

The launch of the European Robotic Arm to the ISS has once again been postponed. It is confirmed by ESA, contractor of the ERA, that the Proton launch which would take place in July has again been delayed due to production problems with the Russian MLM-module. ERA was to be the secondary payload on that flight. The European Robotic Arm is one of the most important projects of the European space industry. The robot-arm is unique because of its ability to ‘walk’ across the space station, so to speak. ByRead More