Lighting up the night sky, a high-power Atlas 5 rocket streaked away from Florida early Wednesday carrying a $1.8 billion military communications satellite built to withstand the most powerful jamming and even the effects of a nearby nuclear blast to ensure steady communications with troops around the world. The Atlas 5's Russian-built RD-180 first stage engine thundered to life with a brilliant jet of flame at 12:15 a.m. EDT followed immediately by ignition of five Aerojet Rocketdyne solid-fuel strap-on boosters. Generating a combined 2.6 million pounds of thrust, the powerful engine and side boosters quickly pushed the 197-foot-tall rocket away from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, lighting up Florida's "Space Coast" for dozens of miles around. It was only the ninth flight of United Launch Alliance's most powerful "551" version of the Atlas 5, a variant that debuted in 2006 when it boosted NASA's New Horizons probe on a fast-track trajectory to Pluto. Putting on a dazzling sky show, the rocket quickly arced away to the east over the Atlantic Ocean trailing a long jet of rushing flame as it rapidly consumed propellants, lost weight and steadily accelerated out of the thick lower atmosphere. The strap-on boosters fell away about a little less than two minutes after liftoff and the first stage followed suit two-and-a-half minutes later. At that point, a hydrogen-fueled Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C engine in the rocket's Centaur second stage took over, continuing the climb to a preliminary orbit. Perched atop the Centaur was the Pentagon's fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite bound for a circular orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. At that altitude, satellites take 24 hours to complete one orbit and thus appear stationary in the sky, allowing the use of fixed antennas on the ground. To reach that orbit, the Centaur engine was expected to fire three times, putting the satellite into an elliptical orbit with a high point of about 21,800 miles and a predicted low point of 5,500 miles. On board thrusters will be used to circularize the orbit at 22,300 miles and to maneuver the AEHF-4 satellite into its final operational location, joining three other AEHF relay station's already in space. Two more are scheduled for launch in 2019 and 2020. Built by Lockheed Martin, the AEFH satellites are designed to provide a global network of secure, jam-proof communications for strategic command and control and for tactical missions around the world. The satellites are shared by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. An artist's impression of the AEHF-4 satellite in space. Lockheed Martin "This is the nation's only strategic and tactical protected comm satellite network," said Mike Cacheiro, Lockheed Martin's AEHF program manager. "It's also the only system that survives through a near nuclear burst and can provide communications through environments that other comm systems could not. "So on a really bad day, you really want to have this system in place," he said. The AEHF satellites can handle 10 times more data than the older Milstar relay stations they are replacing, feature extreme encryption and are designed to give "senior leadership a survivable line of communications to military forces in all levels of conflict, including nuclear war," ULA said in a brochure describing the mission. The new satellites also feature advanced technology to resist enemy jamming attempts. "Advanced EHF is built to withstand and overcome even the toughest, most sophisticated jamming threats that are out there," Cacheiro said. The new satellites are "central to our assured, resilient communications for our war fighters and for our commander in chief to survive and operate through virtually any operation." The first two satellites in the AEHF system, launched in 2010 and 2012, cost about $5.8 billion, including ground systems and terminals. The third satellite in the series cost some $900 million. The fourth satellite, featuring a variety of modifications, had a price take of $1.8 billion, officials said. Once checked out and on station, the AEHF-4 satellite will join its three siblings in a ring around the planet providing continuous communications coverage between 65 degrees north and south latitude. The satellites can be cross linked to route communications around the world from different ground stations. "It's not only incredibly secure, it delivers unprecedented speed and bandwidth for the protected channels," Cacheiro said. "In fact, one Advanced EHF satellite provides the same capacity as the existing constellation of five Milstar satellites that are in orbit today. The data rates are 10 (times) what we have on Milstar. "So at a time when you want to deliver videos from our warfighters, which used to take days, now takes hours. What used to take hours for data messages now takes minutes. For voice data, which used to take minutes now takes seconds. We're literally bringing unprecedented capability to the war fighter."<doc-sep>Current International Space Station Cmdr. Alexander Gerst expected to be welcoming two additional crewmembers to the orbiting laboratory Thursday (Oct. 11) — but instead, he found himself photographing their failed launch. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin launched aboard a Soyuz rocket at about 4:47 a.m. EDT (0847 GMT) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But just a couple of minutes after liftoff, a failure in the rocket's booster triggered a ballistic re-entry for the pair of would-be space travelers. Investigations into the Soyuz launch failure will be performed by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos. [In Photos: The Harrowing Soyuz Launch Abort in Pictures] European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst captured this incredible view of a failed crew launch to the International Space Station on Oct. 11, 2018. (Image credit: A. Gerst/ESA/NASA) The astronauts landed safely and were picked up by a search-and-rescue team that was deployed as part of standard launch procedure. Although the dramatic launch barely made it to space before the capsule tumbled back to Earth, it was certainly visible from space. Gerst was able to spot the rocket's climb from on board its hoped-for destination, capturing a majestic streak of white piercing Earth's atmosphere. European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst photographed the space station's view of a failed crew launch on Oct. 11, 2018. (Image credit: A. Gerst/ESA/NASA) "Glad our friends are fine," Gerst wrote in a statement accompanying the image. "Thanks to the rescue force of over 1,000 search-and-rescue professionals! Today showed again what an amazing vehicle the Soyuz is to be able to save the crew from such a failure. Spaceflight is hard. And we must keep trying for the benefit of humankind." An image of the failed Oct. 11, 2018, launch from the ground near Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA) Gerst and his colleagues on the space station were alerted to the launch failure and the safe landing of Hague and Ovchinin in a call from mission control management on the ground. Their schedule was adjusted because they didn't need to help new crewmembers acclimate to the station. The three astronauts currently in orbit are due to return to Earth and be replaced by a new trio of astronauts in December. However, it's not yet clear how schedules will be adjusted to reflect Thursday's failed launch to ensure continuous staffing of the orbiting laboratory. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.<doc-sep>SpaceX inaugurated its West Coast rocket-landing pad in style. A Falcon 9 rocket with a pre-flown first stage launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base tonight (Oct. 7) at 10:21 p.m. EDT (7:21 p.m. local time; 0221 GMT on Oct. 8), successfully delivering Argentina's SAOCOM-1A Earth-observation satellite to orbit. And, less than 8 minutes after liftoff, the booster's first stage came back to Earth for a pinpoint touchdown at SpaceX's Vandenberg landing zone, just a quarter-mile (400 meters) from its launch pad. [See Amazing Photos of SpaceX's SAOCOM-1A Launch] "This is great news for everyone here at SpaceX," Tom Praderio, a SpaceX firmware engineer, said during live launch commentary tonight. "We're all very excited." The twilight launch created a spectacular sight in the night sky for spectators in Southern California, who took to Twitter to share their amazing photos. One of those viewers was Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti. See more "Nope, definitely not aliens," Garcetti wrote on Twitter as he posted an amazing photo. "What you’re looking at is the first launch and landing of the @SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the West Coast. The rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 7:21 p.m. and landed safely back on Earth." SpaceX had already pulled off more than two dozen first-stage landings during orbital liftoffs, with the boosters coming down on robotic "drone ships" stationed in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and on terra firma at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. But tonight's event marked SpaceX's first-ever land touchdown on the West Coast. Such landings are part of SpaceX's push to develop fully and rapidly reusable rockets and spacecraft, a breakthrough that company founder and CEO Elon Musk has stressed could cut the cost of spaceflight enough to make grand exploration feats such as the settlement of Mars economically feasible. In keeping with that vision, tonight marked the second flight for this particular Falcon 9 first stage, which also helped loft 10 Iridium Next commercial communications satellites from Vandenberg on July 25. This SpaceX image shows the successful launch (and landing) of the company's Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base to orbit Argentina's SAOCOM-1A Earth-observation satellite. It was SpaceX's first mission to land a Falcon 9 booster on a pad at Vandenberg. (Image credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX) By the way: SpaceX would like to land every booster on terra firma, to ease the reflight process. But that's possible only when launching relatively light payloads to not-too-distant orbits; on other missions, there's not enough fuel left for the Falcon 9 first stage to maneuver all the way back to land. SpaceX calls its California touchdown site Landing Zone 4, presumably because it's part of Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 4 (SLC-4). This facility, which SpaceX leases from the Air Force, used to feature two launch pads, known as SLC-4 East and SLC-4 West. SpaceX has converted the western one into a landing site and launches Falcon 9s from the eastern one. (The company has two touchdown sites at Cape Canaveral, which are called Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2.) A look at Landing Zone 4, SpaceX's newest rocket landing site, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. (Image credit: SpaceX) The 3,500-lb. (1,600 kilograms) SAOCOM-1A satellite was developed by Argentina's national space agency, which is known by its Spanish acronym CONAE. The spacecraft will set up shop 385 miles (620 kilometers) above Earth and scrutinize the planet using a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument. SAOCOM-1A's radar measurements will track soil-moisture levels, thereby aiding forecasts of crop yields. The mission will also help planners and emergency-management officials keep tabs on wildfires, floods and other disasters. The satellite's twin, SAOCOM-1B, will also launch on a Falcon 9; its liftoff is targeted for next year. Both spacecraft will make similar observations from orbit, which will be integrated with measurements made by a network of Italian satellites. "SAOCOM-1, together with the Italian COSMO-SkyMed X-Band SAR constellation, comprise the Italian-Argentine Satellite System for Emergency Management (SIASGE), a partnership between CONAE and the Italian Space Agency (ASI)," SpaceX officials wrote in a mission description. "Flying both constellations along the same orbit supports a rapid response by providing SAR information in emergency situations." "SAOCOM" is short for "Satélite Argentino de Observación Con Microondas," which is Spanish for "Argentine Microwave-Observation Satellite." Editor's note: If you captured an amazing photo of video of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launch and would like to share it with Space.com for a story or gallery, send images and comments in to: spacephotos@space.com. Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There,"will be published on Nov. 13. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.<doc-sep>A view of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft which launched Oct. 11, 2018, as it experienced an anomaly that led to an abort. The crew landed back on Earth and was successfully recovered. The failed launch of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with two space fliers aboard adds a new chapter to an already long story of mishaps and failures besetting the Russian space industry, according to space safety experts. The incident that happened yesterday (Oct. 11), was the first aborted launch of a manned Soyuz capsule in more than three decades. However, it points to serious underlying problems that undermine trust in the space power, Tommaso Sgobba, the president of the International Association of the Advancement of Space Safety, told Space.com. In March this year, the website Parabolic Arc calculated that over the past 30 years, Russian launchers failed 60 times — that averages to two failures a year. [In Photos: Space Station Crew's Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Launch Failure] Among the more prominent fiascos of the past decade are three losses of the robotic Progress M vehicle that delivers supplies to the International Space Station, two satellites for Europe's Galileo satellite navigation constellation placed into an incorrect orbit, and the debacle of Phobos Grunt — an ambitious Mars sample-return mission that crashed into the Pacific Ocean two months after launch. All of the three losses of the Progress M cargo vehicle, which took place in 2011, 2015 and 2016, were later traced to problems with the third stage of the Soyuz rocket. The two Galileos were stranded in a useless orbit following a partial failure of the Fregat upper stage, commonly used with Russia's Soyuz and Zenit rockets. A faulty Fregat was also behind Phobos Grunt's failure to leave Earth's orbit. According to Michal Vaclavik of the Space Office of the Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite country that is now a member of the European Space Agency, the Soyuz FG rocket, which is used for crewed flights, is a more advanced version of the Soyuz rocket commonly used for launching satellites. The FG was the rocket used in the failed launch yesterday(Oct. 11). Since its maiden flight in 2001, the rocket has performed 55 successful launches and has been, in combination with the Soyuz capsule, the only means of transporting astronauts to the International Space Station since the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle fleet in 2011. "There is more attention paid to reliability during manufacturing of hardware for manned flights," Vaclavik told Space.com. "There are more inspections during assembly, more testing." Sgobba agrees: "When we compare the reliability of the Soyuz manned version with the Soyuz unmanned version, which of course shares a number of common parts, then we see that the rate of failure has been much higher for the unmanned version." In fact, Sgobba said, the Russians have not lost any cosmonauts since 1971. In comparison, failures of NASA's space shuttle program killed a total of 14 astronauts aboard the orbiters Challenger and Columbia in 1986 and 2003. There were, however, several close calls for the Russians, Sgobba said, including a 1983 launch abort on a launchpad and a 2008 failure of a re-entering Soyuz capsule to separate in time from its service module. As a result, the capsule hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle and the crew had to endure a much bumpier return to Earth than usual. "If we look at the track record of the past almost 40 years, we can consider this to be a rather reliable system," Sgobba said. He added that he was personally more concerned about the hole that had been found in the previous Soyuz capsule — MS-09 — which docked at the International Space Station this summer. Ground controllers detected a dip in air pressure inside the capsule on Aug. 30. Originally, officials thought the capsule's shell had been pierced by a piece of space debris or a micrometeorite. An investigation, however, showed that the hole was likely man-made and created sometime during manufacturing. "It's not clear what had happened, but they apparently didn't find it during inspections and testing on the ground," Sgobba said. This incident, he said, points to a major issue — the lack of proper quality- assurance procedures in Russian space manufacturing facilities. "The Russians don't seem to have made the transition towards modern quality- control methods," Sgobba said. "They don't seem to have proper written procedures that would prevent mistakes from being made. The old experienced generation of engineers has retired, and there don't seem to be any systematic training of the young ones and procedures for them to follow." Sgobba said that emerging commercial spaceflight companies should take lessons from the Russian history of failures and make safety management and quality control an inherent part of their manufacturing practices. "Sometimes, bureaucratic measures are needed to establish a good quality and safety policy inside the company and prevent accidents and failures from happening," he said. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.<doc-sep>
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the U.S. military's Advanced Extremely High Frequency 4 communications satellite moves to the launchpad ahead of an Oct. 17, 2018, liftoff. An Atlas V rocket will light up the midnight sky over Florida early Wednesday (Oct. 17) to launch a new high-tech military satellite into orbit, and you can watch the liftoff live online. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V is scheduled to launch the new satellite — called the Advanced Extremely High Frequency 4 spacecraft, or AEHF-4 — is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415 GMT). You can watch a launch webcast live here, courtesy of ULA, beginning at 11:55 p.m. EDT (0355 GMT). Built by Lockheed Martin, AEHF-4 is the fourth in a series of high-powered military communications designed to "provide survivable, global, secure, and jam-resistant communications for high-priority military ground, sea, and air assets," according to a U.S. Air Force description. The satellite reportedly cost about $1.8 billion, according to SpaceNews. "This fourth satellite will complete a worldwide ring of AEHF satellites to deliver global extended data rate (XDR) coverage for the U.S. Air Force and for the partner nations – Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – that also connect to the AEHF network," Mike Cacheiro, Lockheed Martin vice president of protected communications, said in a statement. The first AEHF satellite launched in 2010. Lockheed Martin is building six satellites in all for the U.S. military. The new AEHF satellites are replacing the military's aging Milstar constellation. Just one AEHF satellite has more communications capacity than all five Milstar satellites, Lockheed Martin representatives have said. The Advanced Extremely High Frequency 4 communications satellite for the U.S. military is the fourth in a six-satellite constellation. (Image credit: Lockheed Martin) "It's an important asset for the warfighter and will be employed for years to come," Lt. Gen. John Thompson of the USAF Space and Missiles Systems Center in Los Angeles said of AEHF-4 in a statement when the satellite was delivered to its launch site in July. Editor's note: Visit Space.com tonight for live video of the AEHF-4 satellite launch. If you capture an amazing photo or video of the launch that you'd like to share with Space.com and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments to spacephotos@space.com. Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.