Japan’s new H3 rocket flew for the third time ever tonight (June 30). The H3 launched the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 (ALOS-4; also known as DAICHI-4) from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center tonight, rising off the pad at 11:06 p.m. EDT (0306 GMT and 12:06 p.m. Japan Standard Time on July 1). ALOS-4 was deployed into […]
A new Earth-observation mission made it to space today (May 28). A Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX lifted off with the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite, or EarthCARE for short, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 6:20 p.m. EDT (2220 GMT or 3:20 p.m. local time in California). It was the […]
NASA’s pioneering CloudSat weather and climate mission has come to an end after nearly 18 productive years in Earth orbit. The agency recently decommissioned the satellite, which launched in April 2006 on a planned 22-month mission to study the structure and composition of clouds. “As planned, the spacecraft — having reached the end of its lifespan […]