The Japanese space probe Hayabusa 2 has released an explosive-charge armed impactor called Small Carry-On Impactor (SCI) It was released at 0156 GMT on 5 April to deliberately explode on the asteroid 162173 Ryugu to carve out crater. Before the explosion, a small...
An upgraded version of Japan’s Epsilon launch vehicle launched seven small satellites for various organisations. The launch took place from the Uchinora space centre in Kagoshima at 0050 GMT on 18 January 2018. The satellites launched were: RAPIS-1: a 200kg...
The HTV-7 (Kounotori-7) cargo craft of Japan was unberthed from its connection to the International Space Station by the ISS robot arm at 1132 GMT on 7 November 2018 (Recorrected). The robot arm then released the JAXA-owned HTV-7 into independent orbit at 1651 GMT on...
Launching from the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, at 0408 GMT, 29 October 2018, an Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), H-2A202 rocket has carried the GOSAT-2 (IBUKI 2) greenhouse gas monitoring satellite and five co-payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). GOSAT-2 is a...
At 0145 GMT on 20 October 2018, an Ariane 5 ECA rocket successfully launched the Bepi-Columbo unmanned joint mission to Mercury. There are two main spacecraft plus a carrier spacecraft on the mission. The Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) can be regarded as the main...
The 69th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2018) was held in the city of Bremen near the coast of Northern Germany. The Congress is both a technical symposium, where engineers, scientists and even lawyers present their papers, and a place where the great space...
