Roscosmos

Starting Wednesday morning, we saw three launches from three different continents within 24 hours. It all started in Russia with a launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket.

Roscosmos and NASA are in talks about the new Prichal docking module and allowing commercial spacecraft to dock to it, possibly relieving scheduling conflicts.

On Friday morning, Russian docked its new Prichal module to the Earth-facing side of the International Space Station.

Monday morning, Russia conducted an Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test against one of its satellites, Kosmos 1408. Now the International Space Station is going through multiple debris field passes.

Updated with statements from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin, US Space Command, and the US Department of State.

As we reported, on Monday morning, the International Space Station residents quickly retreated to their spacecraft as the station underwent emergency procedures. A Russian anti-satellite test created a massive field of debris in orbit, putting Astronauts and Cosmonauts at risk.

Now, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has released a statement condemning Russia’s actions.

The Russian cargo ship “Progress 78” relocated to the Nauka module this Friday. There the spacecraft will allow the crew to conduct tests on the brand new module.

Since 2000 humanity has had a constant presence of individuals orbiting the Earth onboard the International Space Station. With the rise of commercial opportunities to reach for the stars, and other nations begin their crew launch programs, when is the next crewed launch?

Over the weekend, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy undocked his MS-18 Soyuz spacecraft from the International Space Station. Along for the ride were Russian actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko finishing their short stay in space.

Roscosmos is preparing to launch two private citizens and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station for a week and a half to film scenes for a movie called Challenge. NASA will provide live coverage of the launch.

Roscosmos is preparing to relocate the MS-18 Soyuz spacecraft next Tuesday to make room for the crew of MS-19 arriving next month.

Cosmonauts aboard the ISS have discovered cracks on the space station’s oldest module, Zarya.

Last week Tesla pulled a “One more thing” and announced they are working on an autonomous robot powered by their Full Self Driving neural net. Many have questioned the companies choice but there could be a clever reason for Elon’s madness. Yes, it includes Tesla Bots on Mars, it’s always about Mars.

On July 21st, a new module to join the International Space Station launched on a Proton rocket into orbit. Since then numerous issues with the Nauka module have cropped up, but recently, it seems to be trending well.

Before Commercial Crew the Soyuz was the only way to the ISS and normally only two were ever docked, making up a crew size of no more than 6. Now with SpaceX’s Crew 1 is on board, upon MS-18’s arrival, there are now 10 crew members for Expedition 64.

Expedition 64 continues and the beginning of Expedition 65 begins as teams prepare to launch the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft carrying 2 Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut to the ISS in the beginning of April.

Date: Friday, April 9th, 3:42 AM EDT

During the Shuttle era, NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos worked out a deal to trade seats between the Shuttle and the Russian Soyuz capsule. When the Shuttle retired this deal went away and NASA had to now pay for each seat it was going to take up until NASA could get its Commerical Crew Program up and running.

On Monday, for the first time in six years, Russia performed a test flight of the Angara-5 rocket. The test was conducted at 8:50 Moscow Time, and saw the rocket head for a near-geosynchronous orbit carrying a test payload.

Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov are conducting spacewalks outside the International Space Station today. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins is tasked with assisting the cosmonaut duo with suiting up and monitoring their progress during what is expected to last up to six hours.