Secretive X-37B program to use NASA’s Space Shuttle facilities

(Photo Credit: NASA/US Air Force)

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B Program: the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, dubbed the ‘mini space shuttle’, will now use NASA’s Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) Bays 1 and 2 for pre-launch preparations. 

European Space Agency prepares for space-plane launch

(Artist’s concept of IXV in flight – Photo Credit: ESA/J.Huart)

The European Space Agency are continuing with preparations for the launch of their unmanned IXV space-plane, which is currently scheduled for lift-off next month. A team of specialists, who will recover the vehicle from the ocean after flight, have now set sail from Genoa, Italy on a long journey to reach the plane’s estimated landing site, where they will perform thorough run-throughs of their recovery procedures to ensure they are ready for the plane’s return.

Putin pledges over $1billion to ensure new cosmodrome is ready for 2015 launches

(Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Rogozin and Oleg Ostapenko visit the construction site at Vostochny Cosmodrome – Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/Reuters/RIA Novosti/Kremlin)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged an extra 50 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) to Roscosmos to ensure that the new Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s Far East, intended to reduce the space agency’s reliance on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, would be ready to launch new-generation Soyuz-2 rockets by 2015 and Angara vehicles, currently in development, by 2020.