LANDING REPLAY: Touchdown! Year-In-Space Crew Lands Safely

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are scheduled to return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Tuesday night after a record-setting 340 days aboard the ISS. In the window above, you can watch the Soyuz’s hatch closure at 4:40 p.m. EST (2140 GMT); the vehicle’s departure from the orbiting lab at 8:05 p.m. EST (0105 GMT on March 2); and its landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 11:25 p.m. EST (0425 GMT on March 2), all courtesy of NASA TV.

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s launch of the SES-9 commercial communications satellite, which was supposed to take place from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Tuesday at 6:35 p.m. EST (2335 GMT), has been pushed to Friday (March 4) because of strong winds, according to SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk.

As a secondary objective, the company will try to land the Falcon 9′s first stage on the deck of an “autonomous spaceport drone ship” in the Atlantic Ocean. Read our launch preview story here: SpaceX to Try Rocket Landing During Satellite Launch Friday: Watch Live

You can also watch the launch and landing attempt directly via SpaceX at http://www.spacex.com/webcast or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml1RO4IcOG0.

SpaceX has now pushed the SES-9 launch back four separate times. Attempts on Feb. 24 and Feb. 25 were scrubbed because of issues involving the loading of liquid-oxygen propellant onto the Falcon 9, and a try on Sunday (Feb. 28) was aborted just before liftoff, apparently because of rising oxygen temperatures (which was partly attributable to a delay caused by a boat in the launch’s “keep-out zone,” according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk).

From SpaceX:

“This mission is going to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit. Following stage separation, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will attempt an experimental landing on the ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ droneship. Given this mission’s unique GTO profile, a successful landing is not expected.”

NASA Satellite TV Information:

NASA TV is available in continental North America, Alaska and Hawaii on AMC-18C. A Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) is needed for reception. Below are parameters for each channel:

Uplink provider = AMC 18 C

Transponder = 3C

105 degrees W

C-Band

Downlink Frequency: 3760 MHz

Downlink Polarity: Vertical

Transmission Format = DVB-S, 4:2:0

FEC = ¾

Data Rate = 38.80 Mbps

Symbol Rate = 28.0681

Modulation: QPSK/DVB-S

Courtesy: Space News