On December 17, 2015 at 11:51 UTC the Russian "Soyuz-ST-B” rocket-carrier was launched from Kourou launch site in French Guiana. The rocket equipped with the "Fregat-MT” booster orbited the Galileo FOC – Galileo 11 (Galileo FOC M4, FM08) and Galileo 12 (Galileo FOC M4, FM09) European navigation satellites. Both satellites were made by OHB of Bremen, Germany, with navigation instrumentation built by Britain’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.

On December 17, 2015, at 00:12 UTC the “Long March –2D” (“Changzheng-2D”) rocket-carrier was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, the northwest of China. The rocket orbited the “DAMPE” space probe. The Dark Matter Particle Explorer, or DAMPE, mission is the first dedicated astrophysics observatory put into orbit by China. Chinese officials announced that the DAMPE mission would be nicknamed "Wukong" after a global naming campaign garnered 32000 name suggestions. Wukong is a fictional monkey king in the Chinese fairy tale “Journey to the West.

On December 16, 2015 at 12:30 UTC the PSLV-C29 (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket-carrier was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island, India's primary launch site on the country's east coast. The rocket orbited six Singaporean satellites: TeLEOS-1, KR-1, VELOX-CI, VELOX-II, Galassia and Athenoxat-1. The prime satellite is TeLEOS 1, a 400-kilogram commercial Earth imaging observatory made by ST Electronics in Singapore. TeLEOS 1 has a five-year design life, and its orbit will yield regular revisits of observation targets every 12 to 16 hours. The five other spacecraft orbited by the PSLV-C29 rocket included microsatellites and CubeSats.

On December 15, 2015 at 17:33 UTC the "Soyuz TMA-19M” spacecraft docked with the Russian "Rassvet” (MIM-1) module of the International Space Station. Due to a malfunction in automatic docking mode, the docking was performed manually by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, Commander of the "Soyuz TMA-19M”. The spacecraft delivered three new members of Expedition 46 to the ISS, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, American astronaut Timothy Kopra and British astronaut Timothy Peake. The new comers joined current ISS expedition members – Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko as well as American astronaut Scott Kelly to form Expedition 46 crew of 6 members.

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On December 15, 2015 at 11:03 UTC the Russian “Soyuz TMA-19M” spacecraft was launched from Baykonur Cosmodrome. The space vehicle was orbited by the Russian “Soyuz-FG” rocket-carrier. The spacecraft is piloted by 3 cosmonauts: Commander, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (center); flight-engineer-1, American astronaut Timothy Kopra (right); flight-engineer-2, British astronaut Timothy Peake (left).

Photo by Russian Cosmonaut training center.

The space vehicle is to dock with the International Space Station in several hours after lift off. Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake will join current ISS expedition members V ... Read more »

On December 13, 2015 at 00:19 UTC the Russian "Proton-M” rocket-carrier was launched from Baykonur Cosmodrome. The rocket equipped with the "Briz-M” booster orbited the Russian “Kosmos-2513” military satellite. Experts believe the rocket orbited the second “Garpun” (harpoon) relay satellite for the Russian military. The first satellite in the communications network was orbited in September 2011.