Hurricane Gonzalo Threat Delays Antares Rocket Launch for NASA

Hurricane Gonzalo has pushed the next private cargo mission to the International Space Station back by at least three days.

Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft was scheduled to blast off on an unmanned supply run to the orbiting lab from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Oct. 24.

But that liftoff has been delayed until at least Oct. 27 because Gonzalo is about to hit Bermuda, where key tracking equipment for Cygnus spacecraft' Antares rocket is located.

"Once the hurricane has passed Bermuda, a team from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Range will return to the tracking site to assess the situation and begin the process of re-enabling the site's functionality to support the launch," Orbital Sciences representatives wrote in a mission update Wednesday (Oct. 15).

"Depending on the impact of the storm on Bermuda's essential infrastructure systems such as transportation, power and communications, the launch date could be moved later" than Oct. 27, they added.

Whenever it takes place, the Cygnus/Antares launch will kick off Virginia-based Orbital Sciences' third robotic cargo mission to the space station for NASA.

The company signed a $1.9 billion deal with the agency to complete eight such flights.



California-based SpaceX also makes unmanned supply runs to the orbiting lab for NASA using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX's $1.6 billion contract calls for the firm to fly 12 missions; it has completed three of them to date and is in the middle of the fourth.

Gonzalo took shape as a tropical storm on Sunday (Oct. 12) and intensified into a hurricane on Tuesday (Oct. 14). By Wednesday, Gonzalo rated as a Category 4 hurricane, meaning it boasted maximum sustained winds between 130 and 156 mph (209 to 251 km/h).

SpaceX Falcon-9 Launch Postponed: Stormy weather delays launch

Stormy weather has forced SpaceX to delay its latest supply run to the International Space Station.

The California company called off its early Saturday liftoff from Cape Canaveral, with a half-hour remaining in the countdown.

Officials said they will try again Sunday to launch the unmanned Falcon 9 rocket.

Image of SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket on launch pad at Cape Canaveral, NOT launching. 

Credit: NASA

The SpaceX Dragon capsule holds more than 5,000 pounds of space station cargo for NASA, including a 3-D printer.

NASA hopes astronauts will be able to one day fix their spacecraft by cranking out spare parts on the spot.

This will be the fifth station shipment by SpaceX.

It's been an exciting week for SpaceX. On Tuesday, the company won a huge contract to deliver U.S. astronauts to the space station.

Brad Kohlenberg, a business development engineer with Made In Space, displays some of the items that will be made by astronauts using a 3-D printer that will be transported to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. 

NASA is sending a 3-D printer to the International Space Station in hopes that astronauts will be able to one day fix their spacecraft by cranking out spare parts on the spot. 

Credit: AP Photo/John Raoux

This undated photo provided by Made In Space shows a 3-D Printer during testing in the ESA Supplied, Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) Engineering Unit at Marshall Space Flight Center. 

Credit: AP Photo/Made In Space

This April 2014 photo provided by NASA shows a 3-D printer after it passed flight certification and acceptance testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. 

The technology demonstration will print objects in the  ESA Supplied, Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG). 

The ESA MSG Engineering Unit at Marshall is pictured in the background. 

Credit: AP Photo/NASA, Emmett Given

In this undated photo Michael Snyder and Aaron Kemmer monitor the performance of extruders inside the Made In Space experiment box during a microgravity portion of flight aboard a modified Boeing 727 from the Zero G Corporation. 

Credit: AP Photo/Made In Space

Indian ISRO PLSV rocket launches 5 satellites: Three minute delay to avoid space debris

The Monday morning blast off of an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) PSLV rocket carrying five foreign satellites was delayed by three minutes to avoid a collision with space debris, the space agency said.

Despite the necessary delay, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle's (PSLV) carrying the five foreign satellites blasted off from the Indian Space Research Organization’s launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh in southern India at 09:52 a.m. local time.

With this launch, India has successfully put into orbit five foreign satellites from four different countries.

The rocket's main payload was the 714-kg French EADS Astrium Earth Observation satellite SPOT-7.

The other satellites are:

• 14-kg AISAT-1 of Germany (already transmitting signals from orbit); 
• NLS7.1 (CAN-X4) and NLS7.2 (CAN-X5) from Canada's University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies' Space Flight Laboratory each weighing 15 kg (CanX-4 and CanX-5 form a dual nanosatellite formation flying a demonstration mission); and 
• 7-kg, 1U Cubesat VELOX-1 of Singapore.

The five satellites were launched under commercial arrangements that Antrix Corporation has entered into with the respective foreign agencies.

NASA OCO-2 satellite to track carbon pollution - launch delayed

The United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite onboard, is seen moments after the launch gantry was moved at the Space Launch Complex 2, Monday, June 30, 2014, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

A water flow problem on Tuesday forced the US space agency to postpone the launch of a satellite to track atmospheric carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 was due to take off atop a Delta 2 rocket at 2:56 am Pacific time (0956 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California but the operation was halted 46 seconds before scheduled liftoff time due to an issue with water flow to the rocket, NASA said.

The launch window on Tuesday was quite short, just 30 seconds.

The timing had to be precise so that the satellite could join the A-Train, a constellation of five other international Earth-observing satellites.

More details on the nature of the problem and a time for the next launch attempt were expected later Tuesday, NASA commentator George Diller said.

NASA's previous attempts to launch carbon satellites failed in 2009 and 2011.

NASA Space suit issue prompts delay of second spacewalk

In this image made from video provided by NASA, astronaut Rick Mastracchio performs a space walk outside the International Space Station on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013. 

Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins ventured out of the station to try to revive a crippled cooling line. 

AP Photo/NASA

Astronauts removed an old space station pump Saturday, sailing through the first of a series of urgent repair spacewalks to revive a crippled cooling line.

The two Americans on the crew, Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins, successfully pulled out the ammonia pump with a bad valve—well ahead of schedule.

That task had been planned for the next spacewalk, originally scheduled for Monday but now delayed until Tuesday, Christmas Eve, because of the need for a suit swap.

"An early Christmas," observed Mission Control as Mastracchio tugged the refrigerator-size pump away from its nesting spot.

If Mastracchio and Hopkins keep up the quick work, two spacewalks may be enough to complete the installation of a spare pump and a third spacewalk will not be needed as originally anticipated.

Several hours after Saturday's spacewalk ended, Mission Control bumped spacewalk 2 to Tuesday to give Mastracchio enough time to prepare a spare suit.

His original suit was compromised when he inadvertently turned on a water switch in the air lock at the end of Saturday's excursion.

NASA officials said Saturday night that it's unclear whether a third spacewalk will be needed and when it might occur, if required.

A third spacewalk had been slated for Christmas Day before the latest turn of events. NASA requires a day off between spacewalks for astronaut rest.

The space station breakdown 10 days earlier left one of two identical cooling loops too cold and forced the astronauts to turn off all nonessential equipment inside the orbiting lab, bringing scientific research to a near-halt and leaving the station in a vulnerable state.

Mission Control wanted to keep the spacewalkers out even longer Saturday to get even further ahead, but a cold and uncomfortable Mastracchio requested to go back.

The spacewalk ended after 5½ hours, an hour short on time but satisfyingly long on content.

Earlier, Mastracchio managed to unhook all the ammonia fluid and electrical lines on the pump with relative ease, occasionally releasing a flurry of frozen ammonia flakes that brushed against his suit.

A small O-ring floated away, but he managed to retrieve it.

"I got it, I got it, I got it. Barely," Mastracchio said as he stretched out his hand.

"Don't let that go, that's a stocking stuffer," Mission Control replied.

"Don't tell my wife," Mastracchio said, chuckling, as he put it in a small pouch for trash.

Mastracchio, a seven-time spacewalker, and Hopkins, making his first, wore extra safety gear as they worked outside.

NASA wanted to prevent a recurrence of the helmet flooding that nearly drowned Luca Parmitano, an ESA Italian astronaut last summer, so Saturday's spacewalkers had snorkels in their suits and water-absorbent pads in their helmets.

To everyone's relief, the spacewalkers remained dry while outside. But midway through the excursion, Mastracchio's toes were so cold that he had to crank up the heat in his boots.

Mission Control worried aloud whether it was wise to extend the spacewalk to get ahead, given Mastracchio's discomfort.

Not quite two hours later, Mastracchio had enough as he clutched the old pump.

When Mission Control suggested even more get-ahead chores, he replied, "I'd like to stow this old module and kind of clean up and call it a day."

He said a couple of things were bothering him, not just temperature, and declined to elaborate when asked by Mission Control what was wrong.

Flight controllers obliged him. Once the old pump was secured to a temporary location, the spacewalkers started gathering up their tools to go in.

Adding to the excitement 260 miles (418 kilometers) up, a smoke alarm went off in the space station as the astronauts toiled outside. It was quickly found to be a false alarm.

The pump replacement is a huge undertaking attempted only once before, back in 2010 on this very unit.

The two astronauts who tackled the job three years ago were in Mission Control, offering guidance.

Mastracchio promised to bring back a wire tie installed on the pump by the previous spacewalkers. "Oh, awesome, thanks Rick," replied the astronaut in Mission Control who put it on.

The 780-pound (354-kilogram) pump is about the size of a double-door refrigerator and extremely cumbersome to handle, with plumbing full of toxic ammonia.

Any traces of ammonia on the spacesuits were dissipated before the astronauts went back inside, to avoid further contamination.

NASA's plan initially called for the pump to be disconnected in the first spacewalk, pulled out on the second spacewalk and a fresh spare put in, and then all the hookups of the new pump completed in the third outing.

ESA ATV-4: Mold Concerns Delay Space Station Cargo Ship's Opening

An Expedition 36 crew member captured this view of the interior of the Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 after the hatch was opened on Tuesday. CREDIT: NASA TV

The ATV-4 Albert Einstein, ESA's robotic cargo ship, was opened Tuesday morning (June 18) at the International Space Station, a day late because of concerns that mold may have grown inside the vehicle, NASA officials said.

The unmanned Einstein spacecraft docked at the space station Saturday (June 15), but it was not opened Monday as planned due to worries that the vehicle and its cargo had not been disinfected properly before launch.

The opening of the spacecraft's hatch was moved back a day to allow the space station partner nations to discuss the situation; ultimately, the partners agreed to have the station crew disinfect 21 bags of cargo on the spaceship to ensure they were clean of mold.

Whether or not any mold actually grew on the robotic spacecraft is unclear. The concerns may have arisen because Russian space agency officials were dissatisfied with the decontamination procedures European engineers took to prepare the vehicle for flight, a European Space Agency official told reporters.

Furthermore, the Russian concerns might have been focused on the documentation of the decontamination procedures rather than flaws in the procedures themselves, according to news reporters.

"It's a well-established principle of spaceflight safety that, under uncertainty, you don't 'assume the best,' you make sure the worst cannot be true," Oberg said, according to news reporters .

"And if you're not sure you decontaminated these items to rigorous standards, then you do it again, to make sure."



Tiny lifeforms aren't unheard of on the space station — in fact, they're often launched there on purpose for scientific experiments.

One study on the International Space Station between 2006 and 2008, for instance, found that Salmonella bacteria grown there in microgravity were more virulent than their counterparts on Earth.

The Albert Einstein spacecraft, also known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)-4, is making the second-to-last of five unmanned cargo delivery flights to the station planned by the European Space Agency.

The spaceship, about the size of a London double-decker bus, was packed with food for the crew, science equipment and spare parts for the orbiting laboratory. It lifted off from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana June 5.

Like the other ATV ships, Albert Einstein is disposable; it will burn up on purpose in Earth's atmosphere after leaving the station.

Progress Soyuz-2.1V lightweight carrier rocket: Launch Delayed

The new Soyuz-2.1V lightweight carrier rocket is a modernised version of the Soyuz-2.1B, from which the Soyuz rocket's trademark four external booster rockets have been removed.

Credit: RIA Novosti

The first launch of Russia's new Soyuz-2.1V lightweight carrier rocket, scheduled for early 2013, is now likely to be delayed until the second half of 2013, its maker Progress said on Thursday.

"The first launch of the Soyuz-2.1V rocket has been preliminarily scheduled for the second half of this year," Progress design bureau's general director Alexander Kirilin said, without specifying the reasons for the delay.

Russia originally planned to launch the first Soyuz-2.1V in October but that was postponed after a failed ground test of its first-stage engines in August, Progress said.

Last December, the commander of Russia's Aerospace Defense Forces, Maj.Gen. Alexander Golovko, said the first Soyuz 2.1V launch would take place at the start of 2013.

The new rocket is a modernized version of the Soyuz-2.1B, from which the Soyuz rocket's trademark four external booster rockets have been removed.

The first stage is equipped with a rocket engine derived from the legendary NK-33, according to the Plesetsk cosmodrome website.

The NK-33 was developed in the 1970's to carry Soviet cosmonauts to the moon onboard the giant N1 rocket.

The rocket is capable of delivering a payload of up to 2.85 tons (6,300 lb) to an orbit at an altitude of 200 kilometers (120 miles), Progress claims.

Soyuz-2.1V launches may be carried out from upgraded launch pads at the Plesetsk Space Center in northwestern Russia and the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan.

ISS: Suspected Leaky Valve Delays Russian Cosmonaut EVA

This still image from a NASA TV broadcast shows how Russian cosmonauts will move a crane outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Aug. 20, 2012.

CREDIT: NASA TV

A suspected leaky valve on the International Space Station stalled the start of a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts for nearly an hour today (Aug. 20), forcing them to wait in bulky spacesuits until it was deemed safe to venture outside.

Veteran cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko were preparing to begin their space station spacewalk when the leak was detected during air pressure tests.

Russian flight controllers at the station's Mission Control Center in Moscow asked the cosmonauts to stay put until the leaky valve could be isolated.

Padalka, the space station's commander, agreed.

"We're in no rush," Padalka radioed Mission Control in Russian, which was translated in a NASA broadcast.

Flight controllers spent almost an hour trying to isolate the leaky valve and monitoring air pressure inside the station's airlock and adjoining modules.

Ultimately, they radioed good news to the spacewalkers — the leak was resolved and it was safe to proceed. It was welcome news for the cosmonauts.

"We're just hanging here and it's kind of boring," Padalka said.

At 11:37 a.m. EDT (1337 GMT) — nearly an hour late — the two cosmonauts finally opened the space station's airlock hatch and prepared to get to work.

NASA MSL Curiosity Video "Seven Minutes of Terror" - Video

NASA MSL Mission Update

Today, Curiosity's two lithium ion rechargeable batteries are being recharged to 100 percent of capacity in preparation for entry, descent and landing.

The batteries, which have been maintained at a 70-percent state of charge during the cruise to Mars, are being recharged using power from Mars Science Laboratory's cruise-stage solar array.

The batteries enable Curiosity's power subsystem to meet peak power demands of rover activities when the demand temporarily exceeds the onboard multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) steady output level.

With a capacity of about 42 amp-hours each, the batteries are expected to go through multiple charge-discharge cycles per Martian day.

More NASA MSL Image Galleries

Briefing Images
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Artist's Concepts
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Prelaunch Images
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NASA Shuttle Endeavour docking delay by Earth's gravitational pull

Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour had to wait an uncommonly long time to board the International Space Station. NASA blamed the orbital holdup on no less than the entire planet Earth — actually, its gravitational pull.

Endeavour docked at the space station Wednesday morning at 12:06 a.m. EST (0506 GMT), but it took nearly an hour for the two massive spaceships to form a secure connection using a complicated set of hooks and latches. Normally, the spring-loaded docking rings between the station and a visiting shuttle dampen out the vibrations associated with their rendezvous rather quickly, and align themselves automatically.

But not so during Endeavour's arrival. It took about 45 minutes for the relative motion to damp out. Only then could the docking systems align and pull both spacecraft together.

Space shuttle flight director Kwatsi Alibaruho said the orbital oddity was actually caused by two things: The massive bulk of the joined space station and shuttle, and the constant tug of Earth's gravity.

With Endeavour docked at the International Space Station, the complete "stack" — as NASA calls it — weighs more than 1 million pounds (453,600 kg).

But unlike small round satellites or, say, the moon, the docked space shuttle and station aren't symmetrical, and therein lies the problem, Alibaruho said, because external forces can affect a shuttle docking.

Russia successfully launches US satellite after 24 hr delay

Russia launched a US Intelsat-15 telecommunications satellite from Kazakhstan after a 24-hour delay for unspecified technical reasons, Interfax news agency said Tuesday.

"The launch went as planned," an official from Russia's Roskosmos space agency was quoted as saying, adding that the Zenit rocket took off at precisely 2100 GMT.

The Intelsat-15 satellite, produced by US-based Orbital Sciences Corporation, is due to provide communications service for customers in the Middle East and Russia.