New Space entrepreneurial space development
seems to be accelerating. The first part
of January had several significant events
including these three:
On January 6, just 34 days after SpaceX
launched its first satellite to geostationary
orbit, it launched a second satellite,
Thaicom 6, to GEO. The company hopes to
launch its rockets over a dozen times this
year. Here is a video of this latest launch,
which took place from Cape Canveral, Florida:
..
On January 8th, Orbital
Sciences launched its Antares rocket
with the Cygnus module on the first operational
cargo delivery mission to the International
Space Station. On January 12th the Cygnus
successfully
berthed to the ISS. The Cygnus cargo,
which includes over 30 nanosats to be deployed
into orbit from the station, was unloaded
over the following week. The Cygnus will
depart from the ISS in February and then
burn up over the South Pacific Ocean. Here
is a video of the launch of the Antares:
..
See also the
video of the approach and berthing of
the Cygnus with the ISS. Orbital expects
to do two more cargo delivery runs to the
station this year.
Virgin
Galactic and its partner Scaled
Composites have been developing the
SpaceShipTwo
rocketplane since 2004. They seem finally
to be getting close to space. On January
10th they flew the SS2 for its third
powered flight after making a number
of improvements since the last flight. They
appear to be :
..
They appear to be speeding up their flight
testing as they did a glide test just a
week later of the SS2. Richard Branson says
confidently, yet again, that everything
is lining up for commercial flights this
year.
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