SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launches AsiaSat 8 Telecom Satellite Into Orbit

A high-powered AsiaSat 8 telecommunications satellite blasted into space atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday morning (Aug. 5).

The Falcon 9 rocket, which was carrying the AsiaSat 8 spacecraft, lifted off from SpaceX's launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:00 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT) Tuesday, tracing an arc of orange flame across the dark southeastern skies on the fourth Falcon 9 flight of 2014.

The launch was originally scheduled for 1:25 a.m. EDT Tuesday, but an issue with the rocket's first stage caused a 2.5-hour delay.

The launch plan calls for the rocket to deliver AsiaSat 8 to a highly elliptical "transfer orbit," but the satellite will eventually make its way to geosynchronous orbit about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) above the planet.

From there, AsiaSat 8 will look down on much of Asia, providing a variety of telecom services to customers in the region over the next 15 years.

"AsiaSat 8 will provide exceptional power and additional Ku beam coverage with inter-beam switching capability for services including DTH [direct-to-home] television, private networks and broadband services," representatives for the Hong Kong-based firm AsiaSat (short for Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Ltd.) wrote in an online description of the satellite, which was built by Space Systems/Loral.

The craft "will be the most powerful member of AsiaSat's fleet, with a payload power of about 8,500 watts," the description said.

In a departure from several recent SpaceX launches, Tuesday morning's liftoff did not include a rocket-reusability test as a secondary objective.

NASA Marks Fourth of July with Double Launch

A NASA Black Brant V sounding rocket launches from the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., at 10:31:25 a.m. ET on July 4, 2013. 

The rocket was the first of two to launch in support of the Daytime Dynamo experiment. 

The Terrier-Improved Orion (foreground) was launched 15 seconds later.

CREDIT: NASA/Patrick Black

NASA launched two small rockets from Virgina's Eastern Shore today in an early Fourth of July fireworks display aimed to probe the electrical eddies of the Earth's upper atmosphere.

The two small rockets blasted off within 15 seconds of each other from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va.

The mission: to probe the global electrical current in the winds of Earth's ionosphere with instruments mounted to a Black Brant V booster and a Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket.

"We have liftoff of the Black Brant V & Terrier-Improved Orion, for an Independence Day fireworks show," NASA Wallops officials wrote in a Twitter post marking launch success.

The Black Brant V rocket launched at 10:31:25 a.m. EDT (1431:25 GMT), with the Terrior-Improved Orion rocket following at 10:31:40 a.m. EDT (1431:40 GMT).

NASA's Fourth of July rocket launches were part of the Daytime Dynamo mission, a joint project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to study how electrical currents move in Earth's ionosphere between 30 and 600 miles (48 and 965 kilometers) above the surface.

People on Earth rely on this current in the ionosphere, called the dynamo, every day.

Radio signals are bounced off the ionosphere during broadcasts and satellite communication and navigation signals must travel through the ionosphere in order to reach the Earth.

Then the ionosphere is disturbed, these signals can be distorted, NASA officials said.

The larger Black Brant V rocket carried instruments to measure the neutral and charged particles in Earth's ionosphere, while the smaller Terrier-Improved Orion released a lithium gas compound designed to allow scientists on the ground track the electrical current wind patterns.

The two rockets were expected to reach an altitude of about 100 miles (160 kilometers), but not fly high and fast enough to orbit the Earth.

The rocket launch came after days of delays due to unfavorable weather at the Wallops launch range. Cloudy weather and high winds prevented several launch attempts, which began June 24.

It was only by coincidence that the rocket launch coincided with the annual U.S. Independence Day holiday.

"Happy Fourth of July everyone," a launch controller told the mission team shortly after liftoff. "We beat everyone by putting some rockets into the air."

Orbital Science's Antares Rocket Launch Aborted - Umbilical came loose

Orbital Science Corp will have to wait for another day after an umbilical came loose some 12 minutes before the scheduled launch time on April 17th, 2013.

The Antares rocket is a 13-story-tall booster designed to launch the company's new Cygnus spacecraft on unmanned cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station. Orbital has a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to fly eight cargo flights to the space station under the agency's Commercial Resupply Services program, but first needs to demonstrate that the two-stage Antares rocket is fit for those missions.

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the space agency is depending on new commercial spacecraft like Orbital's Cygnus to keep the space station stocked with supplies.

NASA eventually plans to use private spaceships to ferry American astronauts to and from the space station as well.

Orbital Sciences is one of two companies with contracts to launch unmanned cargo delivery flights to the space station.

The other is Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has a $1.6 billion deal to provide 12 cargo delivery missions using its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon space capsules.

ULA Atlas 5 Rocket Launches SBIRS GEO-2 Satellite

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the second Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) GEO-2 satellite for the U.S. Air Force at 5:21 p.m. EDT on March 19, 2013.

Credit: Pat Corkery, United Launch Alliance

Copenhagen Suborbitals Launches SMARAGD-1 Rocket

Credit: Copenhagen Suborbitals 

The Danish private spaceflight group Copenhagen Suborbitals launched an homemade unmanned rocket Friday (July 27) to test spaceflight systems. 

The SMARAGD-1 rocket launched from the Sputnik launch platform in the Baltic Sea.

Video: Launch of SMARAGD-1 by Copenhagen Suborbitals

Watch live streaming video from csscph at livestream.com

This is it.. The launch of SMARAGD-1 by Copenhagen Suborbitals.
We are on the move to launch areas ESD139 in the Baltic Sea so we hope this long distance live feed will work from 3 AM NYC time.

The Soyuz TMA-05M rocket launch

The Soyuz TMA-05M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan July 15, 2012. 

A trio of Russian, Japanese and U.S. astronauts blasted off aboard a Soyuz spaceship on Sunday for a four-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS).

Credit: NASA/Reuters

ESA Ariane-5 Rocket Launch from Kourou

An ESA Ariane-5 rocket blasts off from the European space centre at Kourou, French Guiana

Picture: JEROME VALLETTE/AFP/GettyImages