Latest news with #spaceagency
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump Drops Jared Isaacman as Nominee for NASA Chief
White House says next space agency leader should be completely aligned with 'President Trump's America First agenda.'
The National
6 days ago
- General
- The National
SpaceX's latest Starship test flight ends with another explosion
The test flight ended in failure as the rocket spun out of control and disintegrated during re-entry over the Indian Ocean
Malay Mail
19-05-2025
- Science
- Malay Mail
‘Mission could not be accomplished': India space agency fails 101st try, satellite lost
NEW DELHI, May 19 — India's space agency failed in its landmark mission after an Earth observation satellite atop a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was lost shortly after lift-off on Sunday. 'Today 101st launch was attempted, PSLV-C61 performance was normal till 2nd stage. Due to an observation in 3rd stage, the mission could not be accomplished,' the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on social media platform X. The 22-hour countdown to launch the EOS-09 Earth observation satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state began on Saturday morning. The PSLV rocket, introduced in the 1990s, is considered the space agency's trusted workhorse. PSLVs failed only twice before Sunday's setback, local media reported. — Bernama
Al Jazeera
18-05-2025
- Science
- Al Jazeera
India's space agency suffers setback as it fails to launch satellite
India's space agency says it has failed to place the EOS-9 surveillance satellite into the intended orbit after its launch vehicle PSLV-C61 encountered a technical issue in a rare setback for the agency, known for its low-cost projects. The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, located in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, on Sunday morning. 'During the third stage … there was a fall in the chamber pressure of the motor case, and the mission could not be accomplished,' said V Narayanan, chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). 'We are studying the entire performance, we shall come back at the earliest,' he said in a statement to local media. #WATCH | Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh | ISRO Chief V Narayanan says, "Today we attempted a launch of PSLV-C61 vehicle. The vehicle is a 4-stage vehicle. The first two stages performed as expected. During the 3rd stage, we are seeing observation…The mission could not be… — ANI (@ANI) May 18, 2025The world's most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace programme that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers. Active in space research since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. In August 2023, India became just the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the moon after Russia, the United States and China. Since then, ISRO's ambitions have continued to grow. Its first attempt to land on the moon failed in 2019. So far, ISRO has recorded three setbacks in PSLV missions, including Sunday's. The first failure was in 1993. On Sunday, Narayanan said ISRO would study the performance and provide details on what went wrong at a later stage. According to local media reports, a Failure Analysis Committee will also be set up to investigate the space agency's latest setback.
ABC News
10-05-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Soviet spacecraft Kosmos 482 plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit
A Soviet-era spacecraft has plunged to Earth, more than a half-century after its failed launch to Venus. Russia's space agency said it believed the Kosmos 482 lander made an uncontrolled re-entry over the Indian Ocean, while European and US agencies were unsure just where it ended up. The European Space Agency's space debris office also tracked the spacecraft's doom after it failed to appear over a German radar station. Encased in titanium, the craft was built to withstand the oppressive 460 degree Celcius heat of Venus, raising concerns it would not burn up upon re-entry. The half-tonne vehicle malfunctioned after its launch in 1972 and never made it out of Earth's orbit for the next 53 years. The craft circled the Earth in an ever-smaller and irregular pattern until Saturday's re-entry. Space scientists said Kosmos 482 posed a small threat, and that a person was about 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning. It was not immediately known how much, if any, of the half-ton spacecraft survived the fiery descent from orbit. Launched in 1972 by the Soviet Union, Kosmos 482 was part of a series of missions bound for Venus. But this one never made it out of orbit around Earth, stranded there by a rocket malfunction. Much of the spacecraft came tumbling back to Earth within a decade of the failed launch. No longer able to resist gravity's tug as its orbit dwindled, the spherical lander — an estimated 1-metre across and weighing half a tonne — was the last part of the spacecraft to come down. Any surviving wreckage will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty. After following the spacecraft's downward spiral, scientists, military experts and others could not pinpoint in advance precisely when or where the spacecraft might come down. Solar activity added to the uncertainty as well as the spacecraft's deteriorating condition after so long in space. After so much anticipation, some observers were disappointed by the lingering uncertainty over the exact whereabouts of the spacecraft's grave. "If it was over the Indian Ocean, only the whales saw it," Dutch scientist Marco Langbroek said via X. As of Saturday afternoon, the US Space Command had yet to confirm the spacecraft's demise as it collected and analysed data from orbit. The US Space Command routinely monitors dozens of re-entries each month. What set Kosmos 482 apart — and earned it extra attention from government and private space trackers — was that it was more likely to survive re-entry, according to officials. It was also coming in uncontrolled, without any intervention by flight controllers who normally target the Pacific and other vast expanses of water for old satellites and other space debris. ABC/wires
