Big week for commercial space

Orbital's Cygnus space craft will be released for the ISS following its successful resupply mission. SpaceX and Blue Origin have launched scheduled. SpaceX is scheduled to launch the EUTELSAT/ABS mission today at 10:29am ET. Blue Origin has announced plans for another launch of its New Shepard vehicle on Friday -- which is a break from the previous launches, which were only announced after they took place.

SpaceX SES-8 Mission Launch Successful

After a couple of delays, the launch of the SpaceX SES-8 mission has occurred.
The spacecraft has obtained the transfer orbit (GTO) needed to place the payload into GEO (Geostationary Earth Orbit).
As stated in my previous post, this is a first for the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (as for SpaceX as a whole).  Completion of this mission (and there is still a lot of mission left) will demonstrate SpaceX's ability to deliver payload to this much higher orbit.

Orbital Sciences completes the first launch of its Antares rocket

Orbital Sciences completed its first launch of the Antares rocket - as well as the first launch from its new facilities at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, VA.

The launch took place on April 21st at 5:00 PM local time (EDT).

This launch is the first step towards demonstrating Orbital's capability to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), for which it will use the company's Cygnus spacecraft.  Orbital Sciences is one of the two companies providing services under  NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program, SpaceX being the other.

Once the Cygnus spacecraft has completed its demo missions, orbital will begin fulfilling its contract with NASA is for eight resupply missions, which are anticipated to start by the end of this year (2013).