Spaceflight In 2016: The Highlights

Bigelow Aerospace’s testbed inflatable module was attached to the International Space Station (ISS) in April and successfully inflated in May. Bigelow has teamed with United Launch Alliance to orbit its larger B330 expandable habitat by Atlas V in 2020 and berth it to the ISS, if NASA is willing.

Intelsat signed up as the first customer for Orbital ATK’s on-orbit satellite serving venture, Space Logistics, in April with the first Mission Extension Vehicle to be launched to an out-of-service Intelsat spacecraft to test rendezvous and docking in 2019 and begin a five-year program of servicing missions under the contract.

A joint venture of OneWeb and Airbus Defense and Space announced plans in April to build a satellite production facility near Kennedy Space Center. With cofinancing from Florida, the factory is set to open in 2017 and produce 15 of the 330-lb. spacecraft a week at full capacity. OneWeb plans a fleet of 900 satellites to provide internet access from space.

India launched its indigenous Reusable Launch Vehicle technology demonstrator on May 23. The 21-ft.-long winged vehicle separated from its booster at 56 km (35 mi.) altitude, then soared to 65 km before reentering the atmosphere at more than Mach 5 and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

China lofted the first Long March 7 launch vehicle on June 25 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island. With a capacity to low Earth orbit of 13.5 metric tons, the booster placed six payloads into elliptical orbit, including a scaled prototype of a next-generation manned reentry vehicle.

NASA’s Juno probe concluded its five-year trip to Jupiter with a successful orbital insertion around the gas giant on July 4. A close pass that sent Juno soaring just 2,600 mi. over the planet’s cloud layers with all five science instruments and cameras operating took place on Dec. 11.



Satellite operator SES in August became the first to buy a flight on a previously flown SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The SES-10 satellite is scheduled for launch soon after the Falcon 9 returns to flight. As of November, SpaceX had recovered six Falcon 9 first stages to vertical landings on a drone ship or on land.

China launched its second orbital laboratory, Tiangong 2, on Sept. 15 as a step toward assembling a space station around the end of the decade. On China’s sixth manned spaceflight mission, and first in three years, two astronauts boarded the laboratory for a 30-day stay on Oct. 18 after the automatic docking of their Shenzhou 11 spacecraft.

Europe’s Rosetta mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko came to an end on Sept. 30, when controllers deliberately crashed the space probe into the comet. The solar-powered spacecraft had spent the past two years orbiting the icy body 780 million km (484 million mi.) from Earth.

Blue Origin flew the same New Shepard reusable suborbital launch vehicle for the fifth consecutive time on Oct. 5, 2016, on a flight to test the solid-rocket escape system for the space-tourism vehicle’s six-passenger capsule. First flown in November 2015, the booster unexpectedly survived the test, but has been retired.

Orbital ATK’s Antares launch vehicle returned to flight on Oct. 17. The redesigned booster powered by Russian RD-181 engines launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, and boosted a Cygnus commercial cargo carrier toward a docking with the International Space Station.

The European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter entered orbit around Mars as planned on Oct. 19, but the Schiaparelli lander was lost when it crash landed after its braking parachute and heat shield were released earlier than planned, and retro-rockets fired for less time than expected.

China launched its Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket for the first time on Nov. 3 from Wenchang Space Launch Center, carrying the Shijian-17 satellite to geostationary orbit, where the spacecraft will conduct experiments on ion propulsion for station-keeping.

Investigators have traced the Sept. 1 explosion of a Falcon 9 to the failure of a composite helium tank, which pressurizes the liquid oxygen in the launch vehicle’s upper stage, as it was being filled on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX now hopes to return to flight in January 2017.