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SpaceWeekly - Week 12, 2022

• Mars helicopter Ingenuity soars on 22nd Red Planet flight
The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity stayed aloft for 101.4 seconds and reached a maximum altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) during the sortie, which took place on Sunday (March 20), according to a Monday (March 21) tweet by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity's mission...Read More

• Russia launches military communications satellite: reports
A Soyuz rocket topped with a spacecraft called Meridian-M launched today (March 22) from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia, rising off the pad at 8:48 a.m. EDT (1248 GMT), according to the state-owned news agency Ria Novosti, which cited Russian military official...Read More

• NASA wants another moon lander for Artemis astronauts, not just SpaceX's Starship
The agency announced March 23 that it plans to support the development of a second privately built crewed lunar lander "as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe." The announcement comes after NASA (under budget constraints) pivoted its multiple-source landing contract to a single-source in favor of SpaceX, which multiple companies protested last year...Read More

• Chinese lunar and Red Planet missions send new science back to Earth
China released new results from the moon and Red Planet at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), held virtually and in Texas starting March 7. The Tianwen 1 Martian orbiter and rover mission and the lunar sample return mission Chang'e 5, produced results ranging from rock formation conditions to geological context of the landing area...Read More

• OneWeb's internet satellites will launch on SpaceX instead of a Russian Soyuz
OneWeb announced March 21 a deal with SpaceX — a competitor in the satellite internet business — to get its spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO). This follows a tricky situation that occurred in the wake of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. OneWeb had been set to do a launch aboard a Russia-run Soyuz earlier this month, but that agreement fell apart and the Soyuz was rolled off the launch pad, along with the satellites...Read More

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SpaceWeekly - Week 11, 2022

• Astra’s Rocket 3.3 is back to flight with a successful launch from Kodiak, Alaska!
After facing a failure on its previous flights due to wiring problems which did not let it release it's payload, Astra successfully launched its LV0009 mission on March 15 and went on to place several payloads into Sun Synchronous orbit at an altitude around 500 km. Read More...

• Astronaut Mark Vande Hei Just Broke The Record For Longest NASA Spaceflight
NASA Astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei became the American staying for the longest duration is space. He broke NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly's record of 340 continuous days in space on March 15. He'll return to Earth in the end of the month. Read More...

• JWST reaches complete alignment of mirrors and is geared up for science investigation
After spending almost 3 months in space, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope finally was able to align all of its mirrors successfully, it's currently located 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth and is expected to start operating this summer. Read More...

• NASA's Mars Helicopter gets an exciting mission extension!
After spending almost an year on Mars and completing 21 flights there, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is tasked to explore the ancient river delta of the Jezero crater to find two dry river channels for Percy to take when it will be time to climb up the crater. The rotorcraft might also be made to scout landing zones and catching sites for the Mars Sample return program. Read more...

• Kayla and Raja conducts a spacewalk to prepare the ISS for installation of new solar panels
NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron performed a spacewalk on Tuesday to prepare the right end of the orbital complex for the installation of iRosa Solar Arrays. They also inspected the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the station during their nearly 7 hour spacewalk. Read More...

NASA's gigantic SLS moon rocket was rolled onto Launch Pad 39A on Thursday
As Artemis 1 launch comes near, the colossal Space Launch System rocket was rolled to the launch pad on March 17, ahead of wet dress rehearsal. It's slow journey from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad took around 11 hours. The rocket is expected to launch in NET June 2022.
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• A new crew of cosmonauts arrived in the ISS
On March 18, the "SP Korolev" MS-21 Soyuz spacecraft carrying Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov docked with the station's new Prichal module at 3:12 p.m. EDT as both vehicles were flying over eastern Kazakhstan.
The meetup occurred less than 3.5 hours after the Soyuz launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Read More...

• SpaceX reused a Falcon 9 booster for the 12th time as it launched a batch of 53 Starlink satellites to Low Earth orbit on Saturday
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 12:42 a.m. Eastern. The launch took place in the second of two opportunities that night after storms in the area ruled out a launch at 11:24 p.m. Eastern March 18. Read More...

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