NASA spaceship ready for test flight - CNN.com

 

Orion is scheduled to lift off on its first test flight at 7:05 a.m. ET Thursday from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch window will be open for two hours and 39 minutes.

Orion will climb to an altitude of 3,600 miles (15 times higher than the International Space Station) and orbit Earth twice during the four and a half hour test run, NASA says. The spaceship will splash down in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles off the coast of Baja California. Two U.S. Navy ships, the USS Anchorage and the USNS Salvor, will help NASA recover the capsule.

Orion is wrapped in protective panels before being moved to the launch pad on November 10.

 

This first flight won't carry any astronauts, but it will move NASA closer to getting back in the crewed spaceflight business. The U.S. has had to pay Russia's space agency to launch astronauts to the space station since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.

Orion's crew module is designed to carry four people on a 21-day mission. But it could support six astronauts for shorter missions. By comparison, the Apollo capsules held three astronauts and were out in space for about six to 12 days.

Read more:  NASA spaceship ready for test flight - CNN.com

First-Ever Comet Landing Next Week to Be Truly Epic, Scientists Say

 

…The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is just days away from releasing its Philae lander down to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and scientists working with the mission can feel the anticipation building for the Nov. 12 landing.

"We're all excited about this," Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor said during an ESA Google+ webcast today (Nov. 7.). "You should be excited about this … My kids finally think their dad is cool because he works on Rosetta." [See images from Rosetta comet mission]….

Click on following to read the entire article:  First-Ever Comet Landing Next Week to Be Truly Epic, Scientists Say

Russian space chief proposes a nuclear spaceship

President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday threw his weight behind a proposal to build a nuclear-powered space ship and give Russia an edge in the space race.

Perminov described the proposed nuclear-powered spaceship as a "unique breakthrough project," but offered few details.

ship will have a megawatt-class nuclear reactor, as opposed to small nuclear reactors that powered previous Soviet satellites

We never talk about using them for earth-to-orbit launch,…. "The way they have always talked about it in NASA missions is for use in deep space."

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