Spacecraft
The Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft blasted off for its Orb-7 mission for NASA
A little while ago Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft blasted off atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral. After about 21 minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage went en route to its destination. This is its seventh official mission, called Orbital-7 or simply Orb-7 but also CRS OA-7, to transport supplies to the International Space Station for NASA.
The return of three astronauts from the International Space Station marks the end of Expedition 50
A little while ago the astronaut Shane Kimbrough and the cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko returned to Earth on the Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft, that landed without problems in Kazakhstan. The three of them spent more than five months on the International Space Station, where they arrived on October 21, 2016 as part of Expedition 49.
Mission CRS-10 accomplished: the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has come back to Earth
A little while ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-10 (Cargo Resupply Service 10) mission for NASA splashing down smoothly in the Pacific Ocean a little more than 420 kilometers (about 326 miles) off the coast of California. The Dragon left the International Space Station a few hours before.
SpaceX announced a private journey around the Moon
Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO, has announced that his company was hired to send two people on a private journey around the Moon in 2018. Musk didn’t reveal the two persons’ identity nor indicated the journey’s cost but merely stated that they have already paid a substantial deposit. The journey will be made on the Dragon V2 spacecraft, the version developed precisely for manned missions, which will be launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket.
