Season’s Greetings
Season's Greetings - Celebrating achievements in human spaceflight [All images credit: NASA] As 2019 draws to a close the Space Adventures’ team would like to wish you all the best for the holiday season and a prosperous year ahead. This year marked global celebrations of the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s greatest accomplishments - the successful Apollo [...]
Boeing Starliner – Progress to Launch
Boeing Starliner - Progress to Launch As I wrote about earlier this year, the Boeing Starliner spacecraft is being developed to take professional and private astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), and is nearing completion. The un-crewed test flight to the International Space Station is just around the corner – December 20 to be precise. This is a [...]
Comment on NASA’s support of private astronaut missions to ISS
Congratulations to NASA for announcing plans for space tourism to the U.S. segment of the space station. Space tourism actually began 18 years ago. On April 25, 2001 NASA approved Space Adventures’ first space tourist to visit the ISS, Dennis Tito, who launched just three days later (just in time). After his historic flight, NASA and all ISS partners approved [...]
Coming to a launchpad in the Summer of 2019 – Boeing Starliner
SpaceX’s Dragon isn’t the only commercial spacecraft in the game, Boeing’s Starliner will also be making its debut un-crewed flight this year. Just like Dragon, the Starliner is also funded by NASA as part of its Commercial Crew Program. The spacecraft has been in development since 2010 and is now nearing completion. In this blog post we take a [...]
Amazing views from the International Space Station
Whether you are looking back on Earth or up into space, the views from on-board the International Space Station are truly breathtaking. We found the below images in the archive of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s year-long mission to the International Space Station, and thought they were too good not to share. Scott launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur [...]
A New Day is Rising
Crew Dragon approaching the International Space Station during demonstration the flight on March 3, 2019. As we congratulate SpaceX on the success of the launch and docking of Crew Demo-1, we wish them continued success in completing this critical test flight. Eight years ago, NASA ceased their Space Shuttle program leaving the space agency reliant on other vehicles [...]
Commercial Spaceflight in 2019 — An exciting year ahead!
Space exploration can often be a waiting game. Significant advancement does not happen quickly as the technology required is complex, and the costs of innovation are high. There is an expression in the UK, where I grew up, that any public transport user can relate to and goes something like, “You wait ages for your bus, and three turn up [...]
7 things everyone should know about the International Space Station
1. It’s in low-Earth orbit The ISS is in low-Earth orbit. This means that even though it is in space it is still subject to Earth’s gravity and is falling back to Earth, but it is traveling at such speed (approx. 17,500 mile per hour) that it is actually falling around Earth. It is typically 250 miles above the [...]
ISS Cupola – a room with an extraordinary view
Positioned on the Earth facing side of the International Space Station (ISS) the Cupola provides extraordinary views of the Earth. The Cupola juts out from the main structure of the ISS and has six side windows and one large center window, which allow astronauts to look both along the ISS to the horizon, and directly down onto Earth below. The [...]
Soyuz spacecraft – success through continual improvement
Today, there are only two vehicles that can carry humans into space. One is the Russian Soyuz, the other is the Chinese Shenzhou (see below). Only Chinese professional astronauts (or taikonauts) are allowed to fly on the Shenzhou, but the Russian Soyuz has flown private and professional astronauts from all over the world. The Soyuz currently flies four times per year [...]
