The first Dream Chaser

by Zlatan Bisercic - November 13, 2023

Sierra Space has completed assembly of its first Dream Chaser vehicle as it aims for a launch of that spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) as soon as next spring. It is in development for over a decade, intended to initially serve as a cargo transportation vehicle, ferrying supplies and experiments to and from the ISS. It will launch on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral and return to Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility runway at the Kennedy Space Center. Sierra Space has not disclosed a target launch date for the first Dream Chaser mission, bit there are speculations for launch sometime in March. Dream Chaser has a minimum of seven missions to the ISS under a Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract award in 2016.

Onward to Mars! Curiosity, a car-sized NASA’s Mars rover has now seen the sun rise on Mars over 4 000 times. Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5, 2012. Equipped like a geologist, it has been studying the landscape, using its “rock hammer” (i.e., drill) to look inside rocks and then study them with onboard tools. Curiosity has now drilled for 39 samples, which have been analyzed inside its tiny onboard lab. It’s mission: determine if ancient Mars ever had the conditions to support microbial life. But not only that. The big part of Curiosity’s mission on Mars is to send back pictures via Mastcam camera (located on the top of the mast) which gives us a human eye-level view. We hope for many more sun rises and many more beautiful pictures from Mars!

As for the launches, we had three last week. Two from SpaceX using Falcon 9 and one from China using its Long March 3B rocket. The first launch took off from Cape Canaveral just after midnight on November 7. The payload consisted of 23 Starlink satellites. The other SpaceX flight also took off from Cape Canveral on November 9 carrying Dragon capsule for the ISS supply mission. The last flight took off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center on November 9. A Long March 3B rocket successfully placed ChinaSat-6E into its planned geosynchronous orbit. It will take over the radio and television broadcasting role of the ChinaSat-6B satellite launched in July 2007.

Keep looking up and see you next time!

Sources: SpaceNews, Universe Today, Spaceflight Now, Space.com, Space Daily, Wikipedia