It was night when in Europe when, from the spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana, the space freighter ATV-5 (Automated Transfer Vehicle 5) was launched. It was named Georges Lemaître after the Belgian astronomer who was the first to propose the Big Bang theory and it was launched on an Ariane 5ES rocket. With a total weight of 20,275 kg, it’s the heaviest cargo spacecraft ever launched by ESA to the International Space Station, surpassing the previous ATV-4, Albert Einstein, by about 80 kg.

Almost three years ago, NASA officially announced the Space Launch System (SLS) project for the next manned space missions, even beyond the Moon. The first test launch is scheduled for the end of 2017 but according to a report by GAO (Government Accountability Office), a U.S. Congressional investigation section dedicated to auditing, the budget for this project isn’t enough to keep that deadline.

The Cygnus spacecraft, launched on July 13, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2. Commander Steve Swanson and flight engineer Alexander Gerst started the slow maneuver that will move Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Harmony node after about two hours.

A little while ago, Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft lifted off on an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), part of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Wallops Island, Virginia. After about ten minutes it successfully separated from the last stage of the rocket and started its journey. This is its second official mission, Orbital-2 or simply Orb-2, of transport of supplies to the International Space Station for NASA.

Yesterday the Russian Angara carrier rocket has successfully completed its first test launch from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km (about 500 miles) north of Moscow. About 21 minutes after the launch, the second stage reached the Kamchatka Peninsula, the area ​​far north-west area of Russia, where it fell down as expected. It was a test of the rocket, which carried no actual payloads but only a dummy that was used to simulate them.