Tag: Orbital ATK
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Photos: SpaceX prepares to launch 25th Falcon 9 rocket
A Thai communications satellite is fastened to the top of SpaceX’s 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket for launch Thursday. See photos of the Falcon 9 and Thaicom 8 being prepared for liftoff. Launch is set for 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad. It will take 32 minutes for the…
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Live coverage: Falcon 9 launches with Thai satellite and first stage lands at sea
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral with the Thaicom 8 communications satellite. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter. SpaceX’s live video coverage begins at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2120 GMT).
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Stressing caution, SpaceX delays commercial satellite launch
Photo credit: SpaceX SpaceX scrubbed a launch Thursday to investigate a “tiny glitch” in an upper stage engine actuator on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, delaying liftoff from Florida of a Thai communications satellite at least 24 hours. The launch firm said managers delayed the launch until no earlier than Friday “out of an abundance…
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Falcon 9 sails through customary preflight engine firing
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ignited its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday evening in a critical milestone before liftoff with a commercial Thai communications satellite later in the week. Held down by restraints at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad, the two-stage booster fired its engines for…
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Timeline for Falcon 9’s launch of the Thaicom 8 satellite
The Falcon 9 rocket’s fifth flight of the year will take off from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, heaving the Thaicom 8 communications satellite into orbit on an easterly trajectory from Florida’s Space Coast. It will take about 32 minutes to inject the approximately 6,800-pound (3,100-kilogram) spacecraft into a highly elliptical geostationary transfer orbit on the…
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Upgraded Antares rolls out to launch pad for tests
An Antares first stage booster rolls out to pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops, Island, Virginia, on Thursday. Credit: Orbital ATK An Antares booster emerged from its hangar on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and rolled out to its launch pad Thursday for the first time since a rocket failure grounded Orbital ATK’s cargo…
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Orbital ATK eyes Kennedy Space Center as home of potential new launcher
File photo of the Vehicle Assembly Building with a crawler-transporter in the foreground. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett NASA announced Thursday that Orbital ATK has begun negotiations to lease a disused section of Kennedy Space Center’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building and an Apollo-era launch platform for the company’s proposed next-generation rocket. The space agency said it selected…
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Preview: Cygnus to take flight Tuesday aboard Atlas 5 rocket
Credit: ULA CAPE CANAVERAL — A hundred days after the last U.S. commercial resupply of the International Space Station by a Cygnus cargo ship launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket, the booster and freighter duo will do it again Tuesday. It was just three months ago when a United Launch Alliance Atlas delivered Orbital ATK’s…
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International Space Station to study meteors hitting atmosphere
Astronaut Ron Garan, Expedition 28 flight engineer, caught this image from the International Space Station in 2011 during Perseid Meteor Shower. Credit: NASA CAPE CANAVERAL — Peering down at the Earth’s atmosphere from a research window aboard the International Space Station, a new science instrument launching Tuesday will compose unprecedented characterizations of the chemical makeup…
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Scientists to start fire in discarded spacecraft to study flames in weightless
The SAFFIRE mission logo. Credit: NASA CAPE CANAVERAL — Working via remote control this spring, scientists will spark a fire aboard the unmanned Cygnus cargo ship that launches next Tuesday to study how the deliberate flames spread in weightlessness. Aptly named the Spacecraft Fire Experiment, or SAFFIRE, the blaze will be contained within an instrumented…