New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights
Hamilton Wright Mable ; American essayist
We are recording this on January the 1st 2018
News
Angosat has been recued!!!
Progress MS-06 freighter undocks from ISS
Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space, has been made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George
Prof Michele Dougherty from Imperial College, London, has become a Commander of the Order of the British Empire
2018 Preview
UK
2018 will be the Year of Engineering
The UK Space Agency is joining forces with partners across government and industry to give thousands of young people inspiring experiences of engineering.
The seven new projects will receive £210,000 of funding. They include Monitoring the Environment, Learning for Tomorrow (MELT) which will allow students to understand and analyse key earth observation data relating to the North and South Pole.
Falcon 9 heavy
January 15, no date has yet been officially, Rocket fans should be cautious using this date to book flights, before Spacex conduct a successful Static Fire test, after all they have 27 Engines to test (started in pairs in a 120ms sequence)
Rocket lab electron launch
Second attempt for this New Zealand outfit to get their rocket orbital after a delay from December
India
10th Jan PSLV with 2 surrey satellite satellites on board more details next week including planetary Resources-built Arkyd-6
Chandrayaan 2 will comprise an orbiter, lander and rover developed by the country's space agency, ISRO. The mission is currently slated to launch on a GSLV rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh around March.
JAXA ss-520
second attempt by the japanese for this new ultra small orbital rocket.
TESS
NASA’s next exoplanet-hunting spacecraft launch on a falcon 9 in march
Crew Dragon
Musk says he is confident the company will fly people in 2018
SpaceX is scheduled to do an uncrewed test flight of the Dragon capsule in April, followed by the first crewed flight test in August. possible Block 5 version of Falcon 9 maiden flight
Starliner
Boeing is targeting August for an uncrewed flight of the Starliner and a crewed flight for November.
Virgin Galactic
Should soon begin powered test flights of VSS Unity and Virgin Galagtic Launcher one!!!
NASA’s InSight Mars lander
Launched on on a Atlas V rocket, the 30-day launch window from May 5th. It should land on Mars around the end of November.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe
Launched on Delta IV Heavy rocket a month later between July 31st and August 19th
.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx
August, the spacecraft will come within 1.2 million miles of Bennu. OSIRIS-REx will then use its onboard propulsion catch up with the asteroid.
JAXA’s Hayabusa2
Expected to arrive at it’s target the asteroid 162173 Ryugu (formerly designated 1999 JU3) in July 2018, survey the asteroid for a year and a half, depart in December 2019, and return to Earth in December 2020
JAXA’s and ESA’s BepiColombo
The spacecraft are set to launch combined on top of a European Ariane 5 rocket in October and will arrive at Mercury in 2025
CHINA Chang'e 4
Will launch the lander/rover in the latter part of the year
CHINA Tianhe-1
First of three large modules that will make up the completed Chinese Space Station
SpaceX Space Tourists!!!
Lunar trip on a falcon heavy for 2 tourists in a crew dragon
One web
might start flying up on a European Soyuz
Arianne 6
In October 2018, when the launch complex has been constructed, the validation phase will begin By the first quarter of 2018, key decisions will be made on the exploitation of Ariane 6.
REACTION ENGINES
On September 25, 2017 it was announced that U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had awarded a contract to Reaction Engines for an undisclosed amount to conduct high-temperature airflow testing at Colorado, United States site a Reaction Engines precooler called HTX. Testing work is scheduled to start in 2018, focus on running the HTX at temperatures simulating Mach 5 or around 980 °C (1,800 °F).
HUMANS IN SPACE
SOYUZ
CREW
EXPEDITION
DATE
MS-08
Russia Oleg Artemyev, RSA
USA Andrew J. Feustel, NASA,
USA Richard R. Arnold
55
March
MS-09
ESA’s Alexander Gerst,
NASA Jeanette Epps
Russian Sergei Prokopyev
56 Horizons
April
MS-10
Russia Aleksey Ovchinin, RSA,
Russia Nikolai Tikhonov, RSA,
USA Nick Hague, NASA
57
September
MS-11
Russia Oleg Kononenko, RSA,
USA Serena M. Auñón, NASA
Canada David Saint-Jacques, CSA
58
November
History
50th Anniversaries for
January 22 Apollo 5
4th April Apollo 6
11 October Apollo 7
25/26th October Soyuz 2 and 3 (failed to dock)
21st december Apollo 8
A recent study found that among the chemicals in the dust cloud known as Sagittarius B2, near the center of the galaxy, was ethyl formate (C3H6O2). What's ethyl formate, you might ask? It's the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries, and it smells like rum!
Dr. Arnaud Belloche et al Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy