CNET News reports, “The Falcon Heavy mission dubbed USSF 44 is the next launch on deck for pad 39-A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, currently set for Oct. 31 at 9:44 a.m. ET (6:44 a.m. PT). The Space Force describes it as a classified mission.” The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket ever launched, and will remain so until the Artemis I lifts off as scheduled in November of this year.
Full Story (CNET News)
Tag: Kennedy Space Center
Boeing Starliner Launches on Test Flight to ISS
Space.com reports Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft successfully launched Thursday at 6:54 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station “kicking off the crucial Orbital Flight Test (OFT-2).” Fifteen minutes after launch, Starliner separated from the ULA Atlas V’s upper stage, and “16 minutes later, the capsule aced its 45-second-long orbital insertion burn.” OFT-2, an uncrewed mission to the ISS, is designed to demonstrate Starliner’s readiness to carry astronauts on behalf of NASA.
Full Story (Space.com)
Video
Boeing Starliner OFT-2 Launch
NASA: Boeing Starliner Ready for Uncrewed Launch Thursday
Reuters reports, “NASA astronauts and officials on Wednesday said” The Boeing Company’s “Starliner space capsule is ready for its uncrewed launch this week to the International Space Station.” The launch is scheduled for “6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT) on Thursday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.” The mission is to “attempt to dock to the space station on Friday and spend four to five days attached to the orbital outpost before returning to Earth.”
Full Story (Reuters)
Boeing’s Starliner Expected to Launch Uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 This Week
SPACE reports, “Boeing’s Starliner capsule is all set to launch on the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station (ISS).” The Boeing Company faces “an instantaneous launch window of May 19 at 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT) for liftoff of Starliner atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Boeing, NASA Ready for Second Starliner Test Flight
Space News reports that The Boeing Company and NASA “say they’re confident they have resolved a valve issue that delayed a test flight of the company’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle last year and are ready to try again later this month.” Boeing on Thursday “moved the Starliner spacecraft from a processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center…to a United Launch Alliance vehicle processing facility at Space Launch Complex 40. The Starliner will be installed on the Atlas 5 rocket there for final preparations for the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission, scheduled for launch May 19.”
Full Story (Space News)
SpaceX Launches New Crew to ISS
Space.com reports SpaceX successfully launched the NASA SpaceX Crew-4 mission early Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida. NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti are on their way to the ISS, following launch at 3:52 a.m. EDT. The astronauts are expected to arrive at “the space station for a docking at 8:15 p.m. EDT (0015 GMT on April 28).”
Full Story (Space.com)
Video
Kennedy Space Center Evolves to Serve New Generation of Space Explorers
Speaker: Robert Cabana, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
By Duane Hyland, AIAA Communications (2008-2017)
Long considered the nerve center of the U.S. space program, the site of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, has witnessed every manned mission the U.S. has started. With the end of the space-shuttle era in 2011, Kennedy faced an uncertain future with many worrying that the best days of the center were behind it.
Not so, according to Robert Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center. Cabana told an audience at “The Transformation of the Kennedy Space Center,” a lecture during the 2015 AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando, Florida, that Kennedy is “rapidly evolving to meet the needs of a new generation of space explorers,” who will need a safe place to leave from and return to as they go about their explorations.
Cabana explained that the center is preparing to host the next generation of launchers and vehicles for the U.S. space program, chief among them the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft. He said the Kennedy also is expanding to meet the needs of commercial space customers. In order to host these new generations of rockets, NASA and its private space company partners are building new buildings, constructing new launch pad complexes and modifying older complexes.
Cabana said the projects include a revamp of the Vehicle Assembly Building; transformation of the Orbiter Processing Facility into a Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility; a rebuild of Firing Room 1 — the room that launched the Apollo missions; and several other changes. Cabana also said that two new launch pad sites were under development: “one north of 39B and one between 39A and 41.”
Another change, according to Cabana, include the Space Exploration Technology Corp.’s redevelopment of iconic launch pad 39A — which launched nearly every Apollo mission — into a facility to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Additionally, Boeing Co. has taken over part of the Orbiter Processing Facility for its X-37B unmanned spacecraft project. Kennedy also has teamed with the state of Florida and NASA’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory to create Exploration Park, a research and development facility on the center’s property that will serve as a hub for private enterprise and private-public partnerships.
Among the more challenging of the refurbishment projects, Cabana said, has been the removal of the more than 3 miles of 50-year-old copper wiring and other equipment from the firing control rooms tunnel between the rooms and launch complexes.
Cabana explained that the end of the space-shuttle era brought about a 43 percent reduction in the center’s workforce. However, despite the losses, and the end of the iconic program, Cabana said, “Kennedy Space Center is set to become a thriving hub of government space programs, private space programs and private-public partnerships” that will give explorers a safe place to return.