Today SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket with 10 Iridium NEXT satellites from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The first stage of the rocket also came back down for a landing onto a ocean platform ship. This was the first mission for SpaceX since the explosion on September 1st during a test on a pad at Cape Canaveral.
There will be 6 more F9 launches of Iridium NEXT satellites over the next year and a half or so. The satellites will replace the current set of aging Iridium satellites and provide improved global satellite telephone and data services as well as add new services such as aircraft tracking over the entire world including the oceans.
On December 21, 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 delivered 11 ORBCOMM satellites to low-Earth orbit and the first stage booster came back and made a powered landing on a pad at Cape Canaveral. That was the first time an orbital vertical launched rocket had done such a thing. Here is a video with highlights of the event set to music from the movie Interstellar:
Lots of launches worldwide this month. Here are videos of ten of them:
** Dec.21: Today in French Guiana, ArianeSpace launched an Ariane V rocket with two commercial communications satellites going to geostationary orbit
** Dec.20: On Wednesday the Japanese space agency JAXA successfully launched a small Epsilon rocket with the Exploration of energization and Radiation in Geospace (ERG) science mission comprised of “nine cutting-edge instruments designed to study the Van Allen belts”.
** Dec. 18: United Launch Alliance launched an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral with the EchoStar 19 satellite, which will provide home broadband Internet services.
** Dec. 15: Orbital ATK air launched a Pegasus rocket from a L-1011 aircraft. The rocket deployed 8 satellites for hurricane studies.
** Dec.11: The Chinese space agency launched a weather satellite on a Long March-3B rocket:
** Dec.9: The Japanese space agency JAXA launched a H-11B rocket with the HTV-6 vehicle carrying cargo to the ISS:
** Dec 7: United Launch Alliance launched a Delta IV rocket with a USAF communications satellite. (Note the flames around the base of the rocket just at liftoff. This is a standard occurrence with the Delta IV LOX/Hydrogen engines).
** Dec.7: The Indian space agency ISRU launched a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) with the Resource Sat-2A earth observation satellite:
** Dec.5: Arianespace launched a Vega rocket with a Turkish earth observation satellite:
** Dec.1: The Russian space agency Roscosmos launched a Soyuz rocket with a Progress spacecraft carrying cargo to the ISS. However, out of range of the cameras a problem occurred with the upper stage, and the Progress crashed into the ground:
This morning Orbital ATK successfully air-launched a Pegasus XL rocket from a L-1011 aircraft. The rocket deployed eight small satellites for the CYGNSS (Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System) mission, which will study tropical storms by using the way GPS signals are affected by the atmosphere. (See the CYGNSS Science page on the site of the Univ. of Michigan team that is in charge of the project.)
Here is the latest Space To Ground report from NASA on activities related to the Int. Space Station:
Lots of other space activities in the past week or so. A Soyuz spacecraft with three new crewmembers for the ISS (Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency) arrived at the station today following their launch on Thursday from Kazakhstan: New Trio Arrives to Join Expedition 50 Crew | Space Station
Here is a video of the launch of the Soyuz:
[ Update: Here are videos of the arrival of the Soyuz at the ISS and of the Soyuz crew coming into the station:
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Today there was also a launch of an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral with the new generation weather satellite GOES-R: