When it was night in French Guiana, from the Kourou base ESA’s Vega rocket was successfully launched in its VV02 mission. In the course of an operation that lasted almost exactly two hours, the satellites Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1 were put into two different orbits, demonstrating the great flexibility of the Vega launch system.

Yesterday SpaceShipTwo spacecraft built by Virgin Galactic, millionaire Richard Branson’s company, has passed a key test performing a flight with its engine on running past the speed of sound. This was a crucial step towards the start of commercial suborbital flights.

On April 4, 1983, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off on its first space mission, the second orbiter to be put into service after the Columbia. The Challenger completed nine space missions but on January 28, 1986 it was destroyed after its lift off for its tenth mission following a fault causing the death of its crew.

Yesterday, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-2 (Cargo Resupply Service 2) mission for NASA splashing down with no problems in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California a few hours after leaving the International Space Station. Shortly afterwards, the Dragon was recovered by the SpaceX ship that will transport it back to shore.

The Dragon spacecraft has just completed a major step of its CRS-2 (Cargo Resupply Service 2) mission being captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm of the International Space Station. The docking operation will be performed by NASA astronauts Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn to bring the Dragon to berth to the Harmony module. After the initial complications, this phase of the mission will really be a no-brainer.