By Leonard David
Space.com

China is readying its next piloted space mission with a three-person crew set to rendezvous and dock with the nation's Tiangong 1 space module now in Earth orbit.

The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft could blast off as early as June 7, although the launch window appears to stretch into August.

The Long March 2F rocket that's designated to boost Shenzhou 10 into orbit was delivered by train to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province in early May. The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft has completed testing and is also at the launch center.

Given a successful mission, Shenzhou 10 is expected to hone the Chinese space agency's skills in automated and piloted rendezvous and docking, as well as sharpen techniques and technologies for constructing a large space station in future years. [China's 1st Manned Space Docking Mission (Pictures)]

Science lectures
According to Bao Weimin, a technological division chief with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., which manufactured the spacecraft, the soon-to-fly mission will engage in research to help in construction of a larger space station.

CMSE

Staff members hoist the first-stage launcher of the Long March 2F rocket, which will carry China's new piloted spacecraft Shenzhou 10, at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Few details regarding other mission objectives have been fully discussed, but the mission will, for the first time, see Shenzhou 10 crew members deliver science lectures to young people from orbit.

Zhang Bainan, chief designer of the Shenzhou 10, said its key task will be to find and tackle problems using Tiangong 1 that may occur during the construction of the heftier space station in 2020.

Heavenly Palace
The 8.5-ton Tiangong 1, or Heavenly Palace 1, has been circling Earth since September 2011. It latched up with the unpiloted Shenzhou 8 spacecraft in November 2011 and was used in China's first piloted rendezvous-and-docking venture — the three-person Shenzhou 9 space trek — in June 2012.

As a target module for Shenzhou 10, the Tiangong 1 is reportedly in good condition.

China Manned Space Engineering program officials have pointed out that the Long March 2F rocket has undergone more than 10 technological innovations to improve its safety and reliability since the boosting of Shenzhou 9. It will be the heaviest rocket China has ever launched.

Shenzhou 10 will be China's fifth crewed flight mission and some reports note that the three-person crew includes a woman— perhaps Wang Yaping — among the team spending 12 days onboard Tiangong 1.

According to Chinese news sources, space-tracking ships — Yuanwang III Yuanwang V and Yuanwang VI — have set sail to support the upcoming mission.

CMSE

This is a recent test of Shenzhou capsule recovery in the event of a water landing.

Larger space complex
The state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese space specialists earlier this year as saying the larger space facility will use an array of cutting-edge technologies in flight control, power supply and waste recycling. For example, power generation from solar panels will be made more efficient and the life span, reliability and safety of energy storage batteries will also be enhanced.

Zhou Jianping, designer-in-chief of China's manned space program, told Xinhua that the 2020 station consists of three capsules, including a core module and two laboratory units. It is capable of docking one freight spacecraft and two manned spacecraft, and the entire system will weigh more than 90 tons.

This space complex can accommodate three Chinese astronauts who will work in half-year shifts during its operational period, but new capsules can be added as needed for scientific research, Zhou said.

Transition
"This Shenzhou 10 mission will be the apparent end of the Shenzhou portion of China's manned space program … not an end to Chinese manned space, more like the transition from Mercury to Gemini, or Gemini to Apollo, without the fore-ordained goals of Apollo," said Dean Cheng, a research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

CMSE

The first- and second-stage launchers of the Long March 2F rocket, which will carry China's crewed Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, are placed at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center for further testing in Jiuquan, northwest Gansu province.

Cheng said the forthcoming mission will also likely test a more extended stay on the Tiangong spacecraft, with lessons from this and Shenzhou 9 presumably being used to tweak the Tiangong 2 spacecraft design.

What will be interesting to see, Cheng said, is whether there will be any new types of missions set post-Shenzhou and before the space station that's scheduled officially for 2020.

"That's seven years for the Chinese to do something else," Cheng told Space.com. "During this time, I'd expect to see Tiangong 2's design finalized and launched. Will it simply be an improved Tiangong 1? Might it be two Tiangongs docked together?"

Impressive growth
In the meantime, as a retrospective, Cheng said China's human spaceflight growth has been pretty impressive.

"In 2003, China had only just launched its first person into space," he said. "Over the intervening 10 years, with no major hiccups, they have put up two people, then three, did a couple of spacewalks, and learned to dock spacecraft manually and automatically/remotely. This, with no pressure from a space race, but instead a methodical approach, step-by-step.

"Consequently, while the Soviets gave up on the moon after 1969 — and arguably before — and the United States gave up after 1973 or so, the Chinese, I suspect, will set their sights on goals between here and the moon and probably beyond, and not then lose interest," Cheng said. "However, given their economic and demographic situations, other factors may eventually curtail their capacities," he said.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's new book "Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration" published by National Geographic. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Liftoff! Launch Photos of China's Shenzhou 9 Docking Mission
• Shenzhou 9 Explained: China's 1st Female Astronaut Heads to Space Lab (Infographic)
• Gallery: Tiangong 1, China's First Space Laboratory

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The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.— A new military communications satellite has been launched into space.

An unmanned Delta IV rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday evening. The satellite was the fifth Wideband Global satcom spacecraft to be launched.

The satellite, which is being sent into an orbit that follows the earth's rotation 22,000 miles above the equator, will serve the U.S. military with the highest capacity communications currently available.

It will take several months for the satellite to settle into the proper orbit.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Brea Reeves/NASA Wallops Flight Facility

The sun rises over NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, where the first Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences stands poised to launch on its test flight from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Liftoff set for 5 pm ET on April 17, 2013.

By Tariq Malik, Space.com

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. —The biggest private rocket ever to launch from Virginia's Eastern Shore is ready to take its maiden voyage on Wednesday, the rocket's builders say.

NASA and the commercial spaceflight company Orbital Sciences Corp. have officially cleared the company's new Antares rocket for launch, setting the stage for what will be a critical test flight from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility here. Liftoff is set for Wednesday at 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT).

"It's going to be the biggest, brightest and loudest thing ever launched from Wallops," Orbital CEO Frank Culbertson, a former NASA astronaut, told reporters Tuesday. "It's going to be visible up and down the East Coast." [How to see the Antares rocket launch]

You can watch the Antares rocket launch webcast on Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

The Antares rocket is a two-stage booster that stands 131 feet (40 meters) tall and is designed to launch Orbital's robotic Cygnus spacecraft on cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station. The Dulles-based Orbital Sciences has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to provide at least eight cargo missions to the station. NASA picked Orbital Sciences as a commercial cargo provider in 2008.

With NASA's space shuttle  fleet retired, the space agency is relying on commercial rockets and spacecraft to serve as the vital supply line for the space station. Another company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., has a $1.6 billion contract for 12 cargo missions under a similar deal. 

SpaceX launches its rockets from Florida, which has a long tradition of space launches, and has already flown two delivery flights and one test mission under that program.

"This does represent a new way of doing business for NASA," NASA's commercial crew program manager Alan Lindenmoyer said. "We're sharing the cost."

Orbital officials said the company began developing the Antares rocket on its own, and later received up to $288 million in NASA support to help develop the Cygnus craft. So far, Orbital has completed 24 of the 29 milestones required to receive that $288 million. The company also added in "several hundred million" of its own funds for Cygnus, Culbertson said.

Orbital is hoping that investment pays off not only in NASA contracts for station cargo missions, but also in deals with commercial customers who want to use Antares and Cygnus. But first, the Antares rocket must prove its spaceworthiness, and that's where Wednesday's test flight comes in.

Orbital's Antares rocket uses two Aerojet AJ26 liquid-fueled engines, modernized versions of a design originally developed to launch Russia's N-1 moon rocket in the 1960s, to power its first stage. The second stage is powered by a new solid rocket motor built by veteran solid-fueled motor builder ATK, which also built the boosters for NASA's space shuttles.

The Antares test flight will lift off from a brand-new launch pad, called Pad 0A, at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a commercial spaceport built at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and overseen by the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority. It's the first test for the launch pad, too.

According to Orbital officials, the test flight could be visible from as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Charleston, S.C., weather permitting. It should definitely be visible as a bright light soaring southeastward across the sky from Washington, D.C., the home of Congress. Culbertson said he hopes lawmakers in Washington see the rocket launch.

"That's a new experience," Culbertson said. "People think you have to go to Florida to see a space launch."

The test flight will be the highest profile launch yet for the Wallops Flight Facility, which was established in 1945 as a center for aerodynamics research. Today, the facility is NASA's hub for small suborbital rocket launches and balloon science missions. More than 16,000 small rockets have been launched on short science missions since the facility became operational.

But Antares is the biggest rocket yet to reach the launch pad. NASA and Orbital officials made it clear that Wednesday's test flight was just that — a test — and one that could fail. Just making it to the launch pad was a feat in itself, they added.

"Regardless of whether it is a good day or a bad day, or something in between, for tomorrow…whatever happens, it's been a good job to get us where we are today," said Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development.

Editor's note: If you snap a great photo of Orbital's Antares rocket launch that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Visit Space.com for complete coverage of the Antares rocket launch on Wednesday.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Brea Reeves / NASA Wallops Flight Facility

The sun rises over NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, where the first Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences stands poised to launch on its test flight at 5 p.m. Wednesday from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

By Tariq Malik
Space.com

It's almost show time for a new private rocket on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

A commercially built rocket designed to launch unmanned cargo ships to the International Space Station is counting down toward its first-ever flight test this week from Wallops Island, Va., a small island that is home to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and a young commercial spaceport. Liftoff for the rocket, called Antares, is currently set for Wednesday at 5 p.m. EDT.

"The team is beyond excited," Barron Berneski, spokesman for the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp. that built the Antares rocket, told Space.com in an email. [See photos of the Antares rocket test flight preparations]

Berneski said Orbital Sciences engineers are currently working to replace a valve on the Antares rocket that thwarted an engine test firing on Saturday.

"Late in the countdown, at about T-16 minutes, the test was halted because the launch team had detected a technical anomaly in the process," Berneski said of the valve glitch in a statement. "A replacement unit will be installed within 24 hours with the goal of maintaining the April 17 launch date."

The upcoming Antares launch is the highest profile launch yet from the Wallops Flight Facility, which was founded in 1945 and currently serves as NASA's home for balloon science missions and small sounding rocket launches that don't reach all the way into orbit. It is located on the southern tip of Wallops Island, which it shares with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a staging ground for commercial rocket launches overseen by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.

Orbital Sciences Corp. / NASA

The COTS Demonstration Cygnus spacecraft completed a milestone when its Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) was attached to the Service Module (SM), and all mechanical flight connections were attached. This image was taken April 2.

Orbital Sciences plans to launch at least eight Antares rockets from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, nicknamed MARS, to deliver tons of cargo to the International Space Station under a $1.9 billion deal with NASA set in 2008. The company is one of two private spaceflight firms with a commercial cargo delivery deal. The California-based SpaceX, which has flown three missions to the station since 2012, is the other and has a $1.6 billion contract to provide 12 NASA cargo flights.

But unlike SpaceX, which launches its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon space capsules toward the station from Cape Canaveral in Florida — a mainstay launching ground for American manned and unmanned spaceflight — Orbital Sciences picked the MARS site for Antares flights.

"MARS has completed construction and testing operations on its launch complex at Wallops Island, the first all-new large-scale liquid-fuel launch site to be built in the U.S. in decades," Orbital Sciences Chief Executive Officer David Thompson said in October 2012 when the company took control of its launch pad at the site.

Wednesday's Antares rocket launch will not carry a full-fledged Cygnus spacecraft when it blasts off. Since the mission is a test flight, it will carry a "mass simulator" designed to mimic the weight of a real cargo ship.

Orbital Sciences has dubbed the mission Antares A-ONE and expects the rocket to reach a maximum altitude of between 155 miles and 185 miles (250 and 300 kilometers) above Earth. The mission may also carry a set of tiny satellites for NASA, according to previous mission descriptions.

The Antares rocket is a two-stage booster designed to launch robotic cargo ships called Cygnus on one-way trips. The Cygnus spacecraft is a one-use vehicle and is designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere at the end of its mission instead of returning cargo to Earth like SpaceX's Dragon capsules.

If all goes well, Orbital Sciences hopes to launch the first official Antares rocket and Cygnus flight toward the space station later this year.

"There's still a lot of work to do ahead of the launch, but after nearly five years from concept design to actual launch, it feels great to be at the finish line of the R&D effort and at the starting line for our next big new product line, serving not just NASA cargo delivery, but other launch markets as well,' Berneski said.

Visit Space.com for complete coverage of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket test this week.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Now Boarding: The Top 10 Private Spaceships
• Pushing Freight To Space Station - Antares Rocket Animation
• Gallery: Orbital Sciences' Cygnus Spaceship & Antares Rocket

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By Mike Wall
Space.com

A private cargo capsule is returning to Earth from the International Space Station Tuesday, and you can watch its orbital departure live online.

SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft is slated to depart the orbiting lab at 6:56 a.m. EDT Tuesday, perform a series of burns and then splash down at 12:34 p.m. EDT in the Pacific Ocean, 246 miles (396 kilometers) off the coast of Baja California.

You can watch Dragon depart the space station live on Space.com beginning at 4 a.m. EDT when undocking activities begin, thanks to a live feed provided by NASA TV.

Dragon is wrapping up its second contracted cargo run to the space station for NASA. The capsule launched on March 1 and arrived at the orbiting lab two days later after overcoming an unexpected thruster malfunction.

NASA TV

The grapple bars delivered to the Space Station by SpaceX's Dragon capsule were unloaded on March 6.

The Dragon capsule delivered about 1,200 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of supplies to the space station and will return about 2,670 pounds (1,210 kg) of equipment, hardware and scientific experiments when it returns Tuesday. Packed among that returning cargo is a batch of LEGO toys that have been on the space station for the last two years.

SpaceX officials will pluck Dragon out of the water using a crane-equipped boat and ferry it back to shore after splashdown, which was originally scheduled to take place Monday. Weather worries pushed things back a day, but the delay shouldn't affect the scientific experiments coming home with Dragon, NASA officials said.

Dragon is the only currently operating cargo vessel that can return supplies to Earth. Other robotic supply vehicles— such as Japan's HTV, Europe's ATV and Russia's Progress spacecraft — burn up upon re-entering our planet's atmosphere.

California-based SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to fly 12 unmanned supply missions to the orbiting lab. Dragon made its first bona fide cargo run this past October, after successfully linking up with the space station on a demonstration mission in May 2012.

NASA has also signed a $1.9 billion deal with Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to make eight unmanned cargo flights with its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule. Antares is scheduled to make its first test flight in mid-April, and the rocket should blast Cygnus toward the station on a demonstration mission later this year if all goes well, Orbital officials have said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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NASA TV

The Progress 50 robotic supply ship approaches the International Space Station during the fly-around prior to docking on Monday.

By Tariq Malik
Space.com

An unmanned Russian spacecraft carrying nearly 3 tons of supplies arrived at the International Space Station Monday, less than six hours after blasting off.

The robotic Progress 50 resupply ship docked with the orbiting lab at 3:35 p.m. EST Monday after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:41 a.m. EST. Such unmanned cargo trips have traditionally taken about two days.

The Progress 50 spacecraft is packed with about 2.9 tons of supplies for the space station's six-man Expedition 34 crew. On Saturday, the station astronauts discarded an older unmanned cargo ship, called Progress 48, in order to make room for Progress 50.

The outgoing Progress vehicle was filled with tons of trash and unneeded items and intentionally destroyed by burning up in Earth's atmosphere. [Space Station's Robot Cargo Ship Fleet (Photos)]

NASA TV

The unmanned Progress 50 supply ship blasts off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Monday.

Progress 50, meanwhile, is delivering about 764 pounds (346 kilograms) of propellant, 110 pounds (50 kg) of oxygen and air, 926 pounds (420 kg) of water and about 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of spare parts, science gear and other supplies, according to a NASA description.

The Russian Federal Space Agency's Progress spacecraft are disposable vehicles similar in design to its three-segment Soyuz crew capsules, but with a propellant module in place of the central crew return capsule on the Soyuz.

Progress vehicles are designed to be disposable and are intentionally ditched into Earth's atmosphere at the end of their mission. Robotic resupply ships for the station built by Europe and Japan are also disposed of in the same way.

The only robotic supply ship for the space station that can return supplies back to Earth is the Dragon space capsule built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX.

Dragon space capsules visited the space station twice in 2012, with the next one slated to launch from Florida atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in March. Dragon vehicles are equipped with a heat shield to protect them during re-entry and are built for ocean splashdown landings in order to return experiments and other gear to Earth.

The space station's current Expedition 34 is commanded by NASA astronaut Kevin Ford. The other crew members are fellow NASA spaceflyer Tom Marshburn, Canadian Chris Hadfield and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Evgeny Tarelkin and Roman Romanenko.

Hadfield will become the first-ever Canadian to command a station mission when he takes over Expedition 35, which will begin in March with the departure of Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin.

You can follow Space.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook  and Google+. 

• Same Day Space Station Delivery Complete | Video
• Blast-Off! Same Day Cargo Delivery En Route To Space Station | Video
• Progress 50 Supply Ship Launches to the Space Station (Photos)

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NASA/VAFB

The payload fairing containing the Landsat Data Continuity Mission spacecraft arrives at Vandenberg Air Force Base's Space Launch Complex-3E where it will be hoisted atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V for launch. Image released Jan 25, 2013.

By Mike Wall, SPACE.com

NASA is gearing up for the Monday launch of an Earth-observation satellite that will continue a celebrated 40-year project to monitor our planet's surface from space.

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is slated to blast off Monday at 1:02 p.m. EST (1802 GMT/10:02 a.m. PST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The LDCM satellite is the eighth overall in the Landsat program, which has been scrutinizing Earth from orbit continuously since Landsat 1 launched in 1972.

Mission team members call LDCM the most advanced and capable Landsat spacecraft ever built. It should help the United States and other nations around the world monitor environmental change and better manage their natural resources, they say.

"LDCM will continue to describe the human impact on Earth and the impact of Earth on humanity, which is vital for accommodating seven billion people on our planet," LDCM project manager Ken Schwer, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told reporters Friday during a prelaunch press briefing. [Photos: The Next Landsat Earth-Observing Spacecraft]

The $855 million LDCM mission is a collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey, which will take over operations after the spacecraft's launch and initial checkouts. At that point, the satellite will be renamed Landsat 8.

Landsat 8 will zip around the Earth at an altitude of 438 miles, using two sensors to study the planet's surface in the visible and infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The SUV-size satellite will achieve full Earth coverage every 16 days, though its work will lower this to once per eight days for the program overall. That's because Landsat 8 will fly eight days behind Landsat 7, which launched in 1999 and recently became the only currently operational Landsat spacecraft. (Landsat 5 retired recently after 29 years of service).

Landsat 8's observations will have a broad range of applications, from illuminating the impacts of climate change to monitoring agricultural output to helping authorities respond to natural disasters, scientists said.

"Landsat data is a global resource, empowering nations to individually monitor and report," said Mike Wulder of the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British Columbia. "Further, Landsat data allows us to see what the world looks like, and how it has changed over time."

The weather should be good at Vandenberg during Monday's launch window, officials said, but it hasn't been cooperating today. The mission team wanted to perform some ordnance connections on LDCM's launch vehicle, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, earlier Friday, but were unable to do so because of the threat of lightning.

"We've got to be able to get that work done," said NASA launch director Omar Baez. "If we don't, then we'll have to reassess the schedule. But it's too early to tell."

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

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