NASA Successfully Tests Hypersonic Inflatable Heat Shield “A large inflatable heat shield developed by NASA’s Space Technology Program has successfully survived a trip through Earth’s atmosphere while travelling at hypersonic speeds up to 7,600 mph. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) was launched by sounding rocket at 7:01 a.m. Monday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. The purpose of the IRVE-3 test was to show that a […]

ROSAT re-entry, DLR “Currently, the re-entry date can only be calculated to within plus/minus three days. This time slot of uncertainty will be reduced as the date of re-entry approaches. However, even one day before re-entry, the estimate will only be accurate to within plus/minus five hours. All areas under the orbit of ROSAT, which extends to 53 degrees northern and southern latitude could be affected by its re-entry. The […]

What Would NASA Do If A Soyuz Landed In America? (2003 – with NASA contingency plans), SpaceRef “As was the case with a Shuttle accident, NASA (in cooperation with Russia) has developed plans for what to do in case of a contingency Soyuz landing in North America. Although the entire, final plan has not been made public, we can provide, for the first time, portions of the plan under development […]

NASA’s dead satellite falls, starting over Pacific, AP “NASA’s dead 6-ton satellite plunged to Earth early Saturday, but more than eight hours later, U.S. space officials didn’t know just where it hit.” Jonathan’s Space Report No. 647 2011 Sep 25 “I would have expected the DSP missile early warning satellites to have detected infrared radiation from the entry – they do keep a close watch on the eastern Pacific in […]