by David Todd | May 23, 2016 | India, Seradata News, Space Shuttle, Suborbital, Technology
India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has made a test flight of a new design for winged reusable space travel. The endo-atmospheric suborbital test flight, dubbed HEX-1, of the Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) was...
by David Todd | Apr 26, 2016 | Military space, Suborbital, Technology
While the first flight of Iran’s new Simorgh flown on 19 April 2016 from the Semnan launch site appeared, at first sight, to be a failure, most space analysts believe that the flight was simply a successful suborbital launch test flight of rocket stages. Either way,...
by David Todd | Apr 6, 2016 | Commercial human spaceflight, Seradata News, Space tourism, Suborbital, Technology
Blue Origin is proving the concept of reusability as it made a third flight using the same reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket on 2 April 2016. The flight reached an altitude of 103km (339,178 feet) – 3km further than the accepted start of “space” – where it...
by David Todd | Nov 25, 2015 | Personal spaceflight, Space tourism, Suborbital, Technology
On 23 November 2015, the Jeff Bezos-led Blue Origin company made a significant advance in its suborbital test programme when its New Shepard space vehicle successfully breached 100km of space by flying to 100.5km (329,839 feet), and returning to Earth to land back at...
by David Todd | Jul 28, 2015 | Commercial human spaceflight, Personal spaceflight, Space tourism, Suborbital, Technology, Virgin Galactic
The premature in-flight deployment of the feathered tail plane speed braking system was the primary cause of the destruction of the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo (VSS Enterprise) on 31 October 2015, the formal investigation into the accident has concluded. The US...
by David Todd | Apr 30, 2015 | Space tourism, Suborbital
On 29 April 2015, Blue Origin has just made a successful unmanned suborbital test flight of its passenger carrying New Shepard spacecraft and launch vehicle. The flight achieved an ultimate altitude of 307,000 feet before the capsule was separated to make a parachute...