Finally, a successful Launch & Return of the Falcon booster (on land). The other attempts at landing on the sea pad have unfortunately not been successful.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35157782
Category Archives: Quick News
Tim’s EVA cut short
Tim’s fellow astronaut, Tim, had a helmet issue with water leaking in. The team correctly identified the issue and recalled the 2 astronauts due to the risks.
http://blogs.esa.int/tim-peake/2016/01/15/tim-and-tim-safely-back-in-space-station-after-spacewalk
We have Lift-Off
Congratulations Major Time Peake. The 128th Manned Soyuz launch was successful – Russian rocket technology, simple but effective (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) and building up reliability and confidence. Low manned launch numbers eh?
(though they have carried out circa 800 unmanned Soyuz cargo launches as well. Space is Risky….)
Blue Origin Launch Success
Congratulations to Blue Origin on the historic launch of the New Shepard suborbital vertical launcher with a successful return and landing for the booster.
Launch. Land. Repeat.
The very same Blue Origin New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.Launch. Land. Repeat.
Virgin Galactic – SS2 successful test flight
Congratulations to Virgin Galactic on their successful test of SpaceShipTwo’s engine; the vehicle achieved its first powered flight over Mojave today at 14:00 GMT after being dropped from WhiteKnightTwo at an altitude of around 45,000 ft.
Take a look at the BBC’s summation of the flight and the accompanying video here.
ICAO REMAT conference 2013
Dr Andy Quinn will be speaking at the ICAO Regulation of Emerging Modes of Transport (REMAT) conference this year, which along with the IAASS conference, will also be held in Montreal. The full programme is available here [pdf 654k].
UK Space Agency – UK CAA Spaceplane Workshop
Andy is one of the UKSA-UKCAA Spaceplane workshop’s members whose aim is to assist in developing the UK’s Suborbital Orbital Aircraft (SOA) Policy. Andy presented his findings from his PhD research on the subject in terms of the safety aspects of certification approaches. Additionally he presented his practical methodology for implementing the Policy.
Other members included the UKSA, UK CAA, Alan Bond (Reaction Engines), Andrew Nelson (XCOR), Stephen Attenborough (Virgin Galactic), Dan lewis (Economic Policy Centre), and Simon Wragg (Sulri Integration Ltd); Simon authored the initial paper for the 1st Spaceplane Workshop held in January.
Suborbital Space Safety Technical Committee
In March 2011 Andy was confirmed as the Chair of the Suborbital Space Safety Technical Committee for the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS). See here for more details.
Saturn awarded spaceflight contract
Saturn SMS has been awarded a contract with leading private spaceflight company.