![]() SpaceX's next scheduled launch is the Amos-6 communications satellite, but no date has been announced. The latter will fly from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 8, and DigitalGlobe's Worldview 4 commercial Earth observation satellite on Sept. Other American missions this month include two Atlas V flights by United Launch Alliance: OSIRIS-REx on Sept. NASA's last update predicted a launch sometime in the second half of September. The only other possible ISS traffic this month would be an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo freighter, which would launch when the company's Antares rocket returns to flight. 23, a new Expedition 48 crew trio blasts off from Baikonur: NASA's Robert Kimbrough, and Russia's Andrei Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov. ![]() Williams, along with cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin, return home in their Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft on Sept. If time allows, they'll tackle some other odd jobs, including a photo survey of Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Here's Olaf Frohn's chart of active space missions.Įarth Launches and Landings (contributed by Jason Davis)Īstronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins kick off September in style Thursday, clambering out of an International Space Station airlock for a six-and-a-half hour maintenance spacewalk. We'll still have about 19 spacecraft performing routine science operations (Akatsuki, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, possibly Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 5 T1, ARTEMIS, Odyssey, Opportunity, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Curiosity, Mars Orbiter Mission, MAVEN, Dawn, Juno, Cassini, New Horizons, and the Voyagers), while Hayabusa2 and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter are cruising toward their destinations. Rosetta will be brought down onto the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko on September 30, after which it will be unable to communicate with Earth, and the 12-year mission will be over. But you win some and you lose some: September will close, sadly, with the end of one of our great flagship planetary exploration missions. Mid-month (on or after September 8), we'll see OSIRIS-REx launch into a two-year cruise toward a rendezvous with asteroid Bennu. The month of September begins with an annular solar eclipse visible from much of Africa on September 1, with the path of totality crossing Gabon, Congo, DRC, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar.
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