I'm a NASA kid originally from Cocoa Beach, FL, born of Project Apollo. My family worked for NASA and/or their contractors, and I watched it all as a kid. And what kid doesn't like rockets?
Currently, I am an IT engineer, a recovered R&D scientist that spent time in laser metrology, fiber optic applications and also lightning protection. I'm also a photographer, a writer and a bad musician.
My favorite things are space, boating, sports, music and traveling. You can find me on Twitter as @TheOldManPar.
Launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 with four astronauts aboard on the Axiom-3 Mission. Photo: Charles Boyer
Minutes before a warm front brought heavy showers to Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX launched the Axiom 3 mission on a 16 day round trip to the ISS. Four Axiom Space astronauts rode the chartered Space-X Crew Dragon module to orbit on top of a Falcon 9 booster at 4:49 PM EST this evening. The all-European crew is expected to dock at ISS in two days’ time and stay aboard the station until February 3, 2024.
Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon sitting on Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center on January 17, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer
Earlier today, SpaceX announced that they are delaying their planned launch of Falcon 9 carrying four astronauts to orbit aboard a Crew Dragon to the International Space Station for “teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.”
The mission on behalf of Axiom Space is dubbed Axiom-3 and will now launch NET on Thursday, January 18, 2024, at 4:49 PM EST.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crewed capsule heading to space. Photo: Charles Boyer
Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Florida’s Space Coast every year to view a rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
While the area is accommodating and friendly to tourists, those same tourists often ask the same question of the locals: “Where is the best places to view a rocket launch?” The answer to “where is the best place to view a launch?” is best prefaced with “it depends.”
Shining brightly in this Hubble image is our closest stellar neighbor: Proxima Centauri. Although it looks bright through the eye of Hubble, as you might expect from the nearest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri is not visible to the naked eye. Space Initiatives, Inc. in Titusville plans to study the possibility of a mission to this star in this century. Photo: Creative Commons
It sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie: a space mission to visit another star to find out if life or the potential of it exists there.
Lockheed Martin X-59 Photography By Garry Tice 1011 Lockheed Way, Palmdale, Ca. 93599 Date: 12/12/2023
NASA unveiled America’s new X-59 aircraft today at LMs Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. The experimental aircraft is designed as an experimental test-bed for “quiet supersonic” air travel and it is hoped that it will serve as a serious starting point for commercial aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound, this time in a quieter, more efficient manner than previous airplanes like the Concorde.
ULA’s Vulcan lifting off in the early hours of January 8, 2024. Photo: Charles Boyer, FMN
Celestis, the Texas company that provides space-based memorial services for the families of loved ones is reporting that its Enterprise Flight payload launched on ULA’s Vulcan rocket Monday morning is successful and traveling 85 million miles (297 mil km) from Earth into deep space.
ULA’s Vulcan lifting off in the early hours of January 8, 2024. Photo: Charles Boyer, FMN
Celestis, the Texas company that provides space-based memorial services for the families of loved ones is reporting that its Enterprise Flight payload launched on ULA’s Vulcan rocket Monday morning is successful and traveling 85 million miles (297 mil km) from Earth into deep space.
In a press conference today leading up to the maiden launch of the ULA Vulcan in the early hours of Monday morning, ULA Vice President of Government and Commercial Programs Gary Wentz stated that the vast majority of the new rocket is either flight-proven or a variant of flight-proven hardware. He said that “the only hardware that hasn’t flown prior to this flight is the BE-4 engine. All the other or variants thereof have flown on Atlas or Delta flights, missions for other customers.”
Vulcan on the launch pad at SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on January 8, 2023 Photo by TJ Waller / Florida Media Now
United Launch Alliance moved its new Vulcan rocket to the launch pad at SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force station this afternoon. Vulcan will make its maiden launch at 2:18 am EST Monday January 8. The latest forecasts call for an 85% chance of acceptable launch conditions weather-wise, leaving only a 15% Probability of Violation of weather criteria. That forecast will likely be updated by the 45th Weather Wing of the US Space Force as soon as tomorrow and is subject to change.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) hoists the Certification-1 (Cert-1) payloads atop the Vulcan rocket in the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) adjacent to Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Photo courtesy of United Launch Alliance.
United Launch Alliance announced today that they have concluded their Launch Readiness Review for the maiden launch of their Vulcan rocket and that the mission has been cleared to proceed to its planned liftoff at 2:18 am EST on Monday, January 8th. They also added that the weather at liftoff time currently has only a 15% Probability of Violation at launch time, meaning that forecasters are calling for an 85% chance of acceptable launch conditions. The new rocket will carry the Astrobiotics Peregrine lunar lander built under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and a secondary payload of memorials for Celestis.
SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 4, 2024. The missio n is carrying a powerful telecommunications satellite for the Swedish company Ovzon Photo: Charles Boyer / FMN
A SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying a telecommunications satellite for Swedish-American company Ovzon lifted off from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Station at 6:04pm EST this evening. After carrying its part of the mission, the booster used for the mission returned for a successful landing at Space-X’s Landing Zone 1 only a short distance away.
