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NASA has adjusted the target launch dates for the two remaining 2008 space shuttle missions. Shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope is targeted for October 10th, while Endeavour's STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station has moved to November 12th.
Read MoreThe 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California, has approved a September 6th launch for GeoEye-1. Hurricane Hanna has changed course away from Florida, so the Company's launch provider, United Launch Alliance (ULA), has mobilized personnel from the East Coast to the West Coast to support the new launch date. Final preparations for launch are underway.
Read MoreSpace shuttle Atlantis is tentatively scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10 a.m. EDT, on Thursday, September 4. Managers will meet at 5:30 a.m. Thursday to confirm that weather conditions created by Tropical Storm Hanna will allow for the move. Atlantis is targeted to lift off October 8, on an 11-day mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Read MoreGeoEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: GEOY) has had to slip the launch of its GeoEye-1 satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. While the launch vehicle and satellite are on the pad and ready for a launch later this week, United Launch Alliance (ULA) advised the Company Hurricane Hanna's projected path off the east coast of Florida has impacted the availability of certified Delta II launch specialists available to travel to VAFB to support the GeoEye-1 launch.
Read MoreGeoEye-1 satellite, designed and built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, has a big job ahead of it after its launch on Thursday, September 4, from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California. The satellite will be able to see an object the size of home plate on a baseball diamond but also map the location of an object that size to within about nine feet (three meters) of its true location on the surface of the Earth without need for ground control points. Together, GeoEye's IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellites can collect almost one million square kilometers of imagery per day.
Read MoreA major accomplishment, to be sure as the five-satellite RapidEye constellation was successfully launched onboard Dnepr from Baikonur, Kazakhstan at 0715 UTC today. Following this morning's launch, the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle in slightly different orbits to allow constellation phasing and will eventually be positioned equally spaced within the same orbit about 19 minutes apart.
Read MoreKorean Telecom Corporation (KT Corporation) has selected Arianespace to launch their next communications satellite. To be known as Koreasat-6, the satellite will be boosted into geostationary transfer orbit by an Ariane 5 or Soyuz launcher from the Guiana Space Center, Europe's Spaceport, French Guiana, during the second half of 2010. Koreasat-6 is the second satellite to be launched by Arianespace for the Korean operator, following Koreasat-3, orbited in 1999.
Read MoreSpace shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, August 30th. Atlantis is targeted to lift off October 8th to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. The first motion of the shuttle out of Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. EDT.
Read MoreNASA rolled the orbiter Atlantis from its processing hangar into the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building after getting a break from Tropical Storm Fay to move the spaceship from one building to another. The quarter-mile move set the stage for the huge event in just about seven days. The excitement mounts as NASA preps for the Hubble service mission.
Read MoreThe European Space Agency (ESA) is about to launch the most sophisticated mission ever to investigate the Earth’s gravitational field and to map the reference shape of our planet, known as the geoid, with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) will be placed into a low altitude near sun-synchronous orbit by a Russian Rockot vehicle launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia, some 800 km north of Moscow.
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