SpaceX from Southern California, successfully launched and recovered the first private supply rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) in May of this year.
Besides containing living quarters, it will carry the booster rocket needed to push the station back into place if it starts to fall out of orbit.
So a few years and a billion pounds or so later, the great architect delivers his monumental vision - a cloud-tickling skyscraper, a giant gleaming obelisk that emerges from London Bridge train station like a rocket about to take off.
Since the retirement of its space shuttles, NASA has hired out supply missions to the International Space Station to the private rocket company SpaceX.
Shuttle Endeavour, which had been docked with the Mir space station, unhooked on Thursday, about a half hour after the Russian space agency launched a Soyuz rocket with three new crew members for the space station.
For a country that put a man on the moon and ran a taxi service to the International Space Station, this is not rocket science!
On 18 August, the week before the loss of the space station mission, a Proton rocket failed to put a communications satellite in its proper orbit.
Getting people on and off the space station is not, actually, rocket science any more.
Pizza Hut plans this month to put its 30-foot logo on a Russian Proton rocket that will zoom to the International Space Station.
It is up to Barack Obama to make a final decision based on the options presented by the panel, but none of the options considered viable includes the default path, the shuttle-derived Ares I rocket and Orion spacecraft, to service the space station.
Earlier this week, a senior Russian space official was quoted by a news agency as saying that delays to the schedule of US shuttle launches to the space station were resulting in extra work for Russian rocket crews without financial compensation.
The CRS-2 supply mission, operated by Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX, lifted off successfully on a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:10 AM Eastern time.
FORBES: SpaceX Struggles, But Remains On Track To Space Station
Private company SpaceX is developing its own rocket family, Falcon, capable of sending seven people to any space station.
We have heard a lot about SpaceX and how its Falcon 9 rocket will soon be used to send cargo and astronauts to the space station, but the upstart is also after a sizeable chunk of the satellite-launch market as well.
The Progress spacecraft being delivered by the rocket is unmanned, and filled with supplies for the crew of the International Space Station.
SpaceX successfully launched its commercial rocket today marking the first time a private company has sent a spacecraft to the space station.
An Ariane 5 rocket has been booked to launch Europe's third ATV cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) on 9 March and this mission takes precedence over all other activity at Kourou.
Until the eve of the launch, United States and Russian space officials argued about the overlap of the Soyuz rocket launch and the continued docking of U.S. space shuttle Endeavour at the space station.
However, the NASA official, Mike Suffredini, said no decisions can be made until a commission appointed by Russia completes its investigation of the August 24 crash involving a Soyuz rocket -- the same kind used to power the flights of crew members to the space station.
On August 24, a Progress M-12M space freighter carrying food and other items to the space station broke up over southern Siberia after failing to separate from its Soyuz-U carrier rocket, RIA Novosti reported.
In any case, now that the Space Shuttle has been scuttled and the proposed Ares I Constellation program rocket has been cancelled, NASA has little near-term choice but look to private ventures for Space Station access.
In this way, things like rocket engines, satellites, Mars-exploring rovers, space suits, and water purifiers on the International Space Station become part of everyday life on Earth.
FORBES: 10 NASA Spinoff Technology Products And The Optimus Prime Contest
He said the rocket reached an altitude of approximately 200 miles, solidly into space, and just 50 miles below the International Space Station.
The second stage opened the capsule in 144 seconds, separated itself from the rocket in 266 seconds and fell on the open waters of the Pacific 1, 646 km off from the launching station, that is 40 degrees 13 minutes north latitude 149 degrees 07 minutes east longitude.
应用推荐