The flight of Apollo 8 is an historical watershed in the course of human spaceflight. Its circumlunar mission which climaxed in a dramatic television broadcast on Christmas Eve 1968, marked a point in time when humanity became a true spacefaring culture. While much has been written and reported about the actual flight, including the reading of Genesis by the crew, this essay will concentrate on why Apollo 8 was tasked with flying to the moon.

After the end of World war II, British space technology held its own against the bigger, better funded US and Soviet programs. The UK had its sights set on landing astronauts on the Moon.

Mariner 4 and the end of the myth.

In Space, people need toilets. NASA is spending millions of dollars on developing a new space age toilet to take astronauts to Mars in comfort and safety.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

Hubble is Big. JWST is BIGGER. JWST is more capable as well. Capable of peering back into the moments just a few hundred million years after the dark period.

ESA, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, TU delft all figured out that they can build and launch a satellite for less. The goal of these smart organizations? Miniaturization. But how small? What if I told you that you could hold a satellite in your hand? How about a functional satellite that is the size of a Rubik’s Cube? Sound crazy? It’s not. Here is how.

After World War Two, the United States as well as the United Kingdom and Soviet Union all began programs to develop rocket propulsion as follow on to the German V2.

For decades, space has been one of the critical assets for military operations. In fact, space technology is a product of defence industry that needed an upgrade in technological capabilities for various military operations since the early 1940s.

Back when President Reagan was working on his Star Wars strategic defense initiative, there was another struggle going on. Two historic adversaries, each a giant with loyal followers set their aims at a new battlefield of Space. Pepsi and Coca-cola each postured to be the beverage of choice for astronauts.

3 technology focus areas.
10 finalists.
$1,000,000 prize pool. Open now. NASA is waiting.

This piece is the first of a two-part blog post by China Aerospace Blog on Chinese spaceplanes posted on WestEastSpace. It sets the context of spaceplanes in China, and goes over past attempts to make such vehicles. Part 2 provides an analysis of projects under development from Chinese state-owned and private companies.

Today is the day SpaceX is targeting to launch. On Wednesday June 3 at 9:25 p.m. EDT, 1:25 UTC on June 4, SpaceX plans to launch the eighth batch of Starlink satellites. A Falcon 9 liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station marks the eighth mission totaling 500 satellites launched to orbit(not including proof of concept).

Neil Armstrong has been referred to as “First Man” as in first man to set foot on the moon. However, the First Man of Space is Yuri Gagarin who became the first human to orbit the earth.

SpaceX is at it again. Love it or hate it, Starlink is growing again. The company is getting ready to launch the next batch of 60 satellites into orbit in just a few days. The original launch was postponed until after the successful launch of the crew dragon Demo-2 mission for NASA.

Even if SpaceX’s first attempt to make history delayed, the weather finally cooperated. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are safely in orbit. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the astronauts in their Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 3:22 p.m. EDT (1922 GMT), May 30. This marks the first human spaceflight from U.S. soil with NASA astronauts on an American rocket and spacecraft since 2011.

A lot of people wonder, why does a really expensive, powerful rocket get stopped by the weather? Well, a number of factors. In the case of the recent SpaceX launch attempt to send people to the International Space Station, safety of the crew is paramount. The launch vehicle itself has a lot to do with it.

NASA awarded some pretty odd contracts in the past. NASA also likes catchy acronyms for their projects. The Southwest Research Institute just got $3 million bucks from NASA for LASVEGAS development. No, not Las Vegas the place for high stakes gambling.

I was very much looking forward to watching the Elon Musk keynote at SATELLITE 2020. What would it be like to watch Elon Musk speak? It was, in a word, mind-blowing. Incredible. Thought-provoking. Inspiring. Annoying. But, at the end, Elon Musk certainly did not disappoint. What were the takeaways?

We know Virgin Orbit blew up their rocket, but how does that system work?

Imagine two objects. We connect one light object and one heavier object to each other by a string. Climb to the top of a tower with these two objects. It is a calm, sunny day with no wind. Once you reach the top, drop both objects from the top of a tower at the same time.

Recently, the X-37B spaceplane lifted off from Cape Canaveral using a United Space Alliance Atlas V as a booster. What is not commonly known by today’s space enthusiasts is that the current version of this booster can trace its origins back in 1957 when the first Atlas flew.

Elon Musk and Steve Jobs have something in common. They like perfection. Think of an iPhone, it redefined smartphones. Think of Crew Dragon, it is redefining spacecraft.

With Elon Musk miffed at the state of California, will he follow up and relocate Tesla out of state? With other officials now turning SpaceX down for funding requests, will SpaceX be next to move?

ULA scrubbed the launch of the Atlas V rocket carrying the secret X37B spaceplane for the Space Force.

Due to the inevitable advance of technology during the last decades, the space industry has
been developing and it is recently showing an abrupt growth such that, as it is widely referred, the world is entering a new space era.

Japan is searching for life in space, on an asteroid. Credit JAXA

To all the Mothers out there. Thank you for all your support, hours of time listening to how your kids are going to build space ships. Thank you for taking them to see movies like Star Wars and Star Trek and suffering through them together.

Face Masks don’t need to be bland. You had a lot of options, ranging from FALLOUT 4 style to home made custom made masks.

AMERGINT, don’t know them? You should, they just bought Tethers Unlimited.

There is a space company that you might know about. Pay attention because this company just went on a growth spurt. In a series of press releases, the AMERGINT Technologies, Inc.’s story unfolded.

China has a plan. The plan involves having a endless supply of energy produced in space and beamed down to the Earth.

China tested a prototype spacecraft on May 5th, 2020 in efforts to prove the technology was ready. It’s good it was a test and not an actual mission since the spacecraft did not perform as expected.

People stood on the hot beach in Hainan Island China. No, a China Cinco de Mayo party isn’t happening on the beach. People gathered for a launch party. They wanted to get a glimpse of the newly upgraded rocket. The Long March 5B rocket carrying the hopes and aspirations of China lifted off from the launch pad in the afternoon of May 5th, 2020.

Virgin Galactic steps one step closer to its Giant Leap goal. The VSS Unity suborbital spacecraft completed its first unpowered glide flight over Spaceport America. The May 1st flight is one of many milestones needed for commencing commercial flights. Good news for Stockholders and Spaceport America.

NASA plans to launch the most powerful rocket sometime in the next few years. The goal, bring America along with allies into deep space for longer and farther than ever before. The launch might not happen in 2021 but the first rocket slowly comes into existence. NASA already inked deals for more SLS mega rockets.

The US isn’t the only country with aspirations of going to deep space. The United States remains the only country to send people beyond Low Earth Orbit. That may change very soon. China is about to test a new spacecraft intended to carry Taikonauts to the moon and beyond.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a spaceplane! No, it’s a lifting body reusable spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station! Part of NASA’s attempt to develop a vibrant space community, NASA solicited awards for commercial resupply missions as well as crewed spacecraft launch services.

One of the three companies NASA announced today will land the next NASA astronauts on the Moon. NASA awarded three firm-fixed-price, milestone-based contracts for the human landing system awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2. The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for the 10-month base period.

Scheduled to begin orbiting Mercury in 2025, BepiColombo is a joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury. The scientific objectives for the mission are to study the planet’s form, interior structure, geology, composition, as well as its craters, origin, and dynamics of its magnetic field, and dynamics of the vestigial atmosphere.

How far China has advanced in the construction of its own space stations, compare the manned programs of the USSR and China and find out if the new Chinese Space Station can replace the existing International Space Station (ISS).

Time running short for NASA’s Mars missions. With the Mars launch window quickly approaching, NASA needs to manage time carefully. Coronavirus pandemic placed additional complexity on the mission execution.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission arrived at Bennu back in 2018. A major event planned for August and keeping scientists eager to see the results. You might not have heard much about this mission, so let me bring you up to date with some important details.

For the last nine months, NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan lived and worked on the International Space Station. Morgan’s time on the ISS will come to an end leaving Chris Cassidy as the sole NASA astronaut on the space station.

No, it’s not a high budget Mission Impossible action movie, but it could have been. Tom Cruise wasn’t piloting a helicopter that grabbed a rocket falling back to the Earth. Instead, a crew wearing black Rocket Lab t-shirts…

Musk put Roscosmos in their place with a tweet: SpaceX rockets are 80% reusable, theirs are 0%. This is the actual problem.

The recent failure of a Long March-3B rocket carrying the Palapa-N1 satellite is a setback for the Chinese space industry, with this being the second launch failure in a month following the failure of a Long March-7A. However, the launch failure also represents a setback, and in some instances opportunities in the Indonesian satellite communications (satcom) market.

A spacecraft buzzed Earth this week. The joint ESA /
JAXA mission flew past on the way to the planet Mercury. Only NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration has successfully sent a Spacecraft to the planet.

From the US territory Guam, sightings came in of a fireball falling from the sky. The strategic location of Guam and the U.S. military stationed there has drawn attention for years. Guam thrust into the limelight during heightened tensions with North Korea. In August 2017, North Korea launched missiles that flew over Japan and into the northern Pacific Ocean in an apparent attempt to threaten the US territory of Guam. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not follow up on his threats, but a fireball came crashing down from a different source.

International Space Station Expedition 63 team was lofted into orbit on April 9, 2020 with American astronaut Chris Cassidy and his two Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.

China First International Commercial Launch Success occurred on April 7th, 1990. You might be surprised who’s satellite China Launched 30 years ago. No, it wasn’t Russia’s, nor Iran… Here is a hint…

The next launch to the Space Station is planned for April 9th and is only a few days away and will leave the ISS with only one NASA astronaut onboard. During a press conference, Astronaut Chris Cassidy answered some questions about the mission.

After missing the International Space Station, Boeing is going to try again to launch the CST-100 Starliner. Try 2 will also be without a crew.

Looking for some things to keep you busy over the weekend, or get your kids to keep them focused. Here are a few cool LEGO ideas for your kids.

There is a lot of attention on the upcoming SpaceX launch for NASA. The hype? NASA is getting the ability to launch astronauts into space from American soil. Did anyone beat NASA back to Space?

An Energetic Market: Updates on the Chinese Private Launcher Industry. The latter half of the 2010s saw a plethora of mostly privately-funded, commercially-oriented launch companies emerge from China. Funding is continues to be very strong for these companies.

So we are on month 3 of COVID19 here in Asia. We have had some time to figure out how to keep ourselves from going stir crazy. Playing some boardgames with the kids is a better alternative to youtube or xbox all day long.

On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. It was 83.6 kg, roughly 58 cm in diameter and used 1 watt of power. Over time, satellites grew in size and complexity, but the recent trend is seeing them shrink.

On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. view of Earth that no American had seen before. His Freedom 7 Mercury capsule made suborbital flight lasting 15 minutes. Almost 60 years later, SpaceX is about to have two American astronauts see a similar view, but take them further than Shepard went and longer. Cover photo from Freedom 7 Credit NASA

In a press release by JAXA, Astronaut Noguchi Soichi is going back to the International Space Station. The March 31, 2020 JAXA press release indicated that Noguchi Soichi is currently preparing and training for the ISS Expedition, will start training to board the first operational Crew Dragon under development by Space-X.

NASA’s new mission called SunRISE will study what drives solar particle storms

In April 2020, one of the most significant events for Chinese astronautics should take place – the launch of China’s first multimodular space station. The idea of creating its own large orbital station dates back to the late 1980s. Chinese Space Station (CSS) should become the “crowning glory” of China’s entire manned program over the past 30 years.

The SATELLITE Show in Washington DC will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2021. Over the past 39 years, the show has expanded significantly, from being a show largely focused on satcom, to one focused on a broad variety of different space verticals, including satellite manufacturing, small/medium launch vehicles, Earth Observation, and basically all other elements of the commercial (and in some cases government) space sector. With that being the case, the conference remains at its core one about satcom.

NASA may have sidelined the Lunar Gateway for a return mission to the Moon, but it is not stopping the momentum. NASA has awarded several contracts for the Lunar Gateway including the most recent one to SpaceX.

A little over a year after Elon Musk launched his Cherry red Tesla Sports car into space on the debut launch of the Falcon Heavy, JAXA and Toyota announced their collaboration efforts on a manned lunar rover. The March 12, 2019 announcement underlines Japan’s reinforced efforts towards space exploration, leveraging key technologies in which Japan excels, in particular cars. In April 2020, JAXA hopes to ink a deal with NASA to put the rover on the moon together.

Yesterday saw the first official launch of a military satellite under the United States Space Force, with the AEHF-6 and TDO-2 taking flight on an Atlas-V rocket. The USSF, formally established at the end of 2019, is an indication of the increasing importance of space in the context of national-level strategies. With that being said, as with any large, government-run entity, the Space Force has seen challenges in coming into its own.

SpaceX continues to be a trend-setting company. Companies in the world now consider SpaceX a serious player in the launch industry. Other companies strive to achieve the accomplishments SpaceX did in the first ten years of operation. Even cross the pacific ocean and visit China. The SpaceX inspiration shows up in companies like Galactic Energy.

Parachutes are plaguing space programs. SpaceX doesn’t like Parachutes. They are difficult to design, hard to package, and easy to damage. The larger the mass of the spacecraft, the more effort to slow down. Larger, more efficient, complex parachute systems are needed. Several failures have hit the industry over the last few years, including SpaceX Crew Dragon, ESA ExoMars, Boeing CST-100, and the NASA Orion to name a few.

Part 2 of the Life in Space with COVID19 we will delve into Crew demo-2 where NASA and SpaceX are planning a launch within two months. There are a lot of pre-launch milestones and activities to cover to ensure a safe flight for the Astronauts. If anything goes wrong, there are lives at stake. Now NASA and SpaceX have to contend with another potential setback, COVID19 pandemic.  

Japan is one of three nations with the ability to launch resupply materials to the International Space Station. Japan’s 9th and final launch of the HTV is scheduled to take place on May 21, science minister Koichi Hagiuda said Tuesday.

With the launch window for NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover opening in a little less than four months, there are nearly daily pre-launch milestones to complete the rover pre flight activities at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Tight schedules on complex missions usually do not mix well.  Now NASA has to contend with another challenge. COVID19.  

NASA has been dependent on Russia for transport to and from the ISS. Over time the cost of seats on the Soyuz crew vehicle have risen.

Since 1995 there has been a record that has stood the test of time and space.  Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov a Russian cosmonaut logged 437 days and 18 hours in space.

The Long March 7A rocket lifted off at 9:34 p.m. Beijing Time from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the coast of south China’s Hainan Province.  A malfunction occurred some time after lift off which Xinhua reported Chinese space engineers will investigate the cause of the failure.

On Sunday, March 15 the Ides of March, SpaceX stood down from its launch attempt of Starlink satellites.

As an American living in China for most of the past 8 years, there have been two reasons to come home every year: Christmas, and the SATELLITE Conference in Washington DC.

Pi π Day is March 14. How does Pi apply to Space?

I was very much looking forward to watching the Elon Musk keynote at SATELLITE 2020. What would it be like to watch Elon Musk speak? It was, in a word, mind-blowing. Incredible. Thought-provoking. Inspiring. Annoying. But, at the end, Elon Musk certainly did not disappoint. What were the takeaways?

A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station.  The spacecraft  launched at 11:50 p.m. EST Friday. The Dragon Cargo spacecraft will deliver about 4,500 pounds of cargo and science investigations, including a new science facility scheduled to be installed to the outside of the station during a spacewalk this spring.