News Archive / Author: Jim Siegel
Jim Siegel comes from a business and engineering background, as well as a journalistic one. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and executive certificates from Northwestern University and Duke University. Jim got interested in journalism in 2002. As a resident of Celebration, FL, Disney’s planned community outside Orlando, he has written and performed photography extensively for the Celebration Independent and the Celebration News. He has also written for the Detroit News, the Indianapolis Star, and the Northwest Indiana Times (where he started his newspaper career at age 11 as a paperboy). Jim is well known around Celebration for his photography, and he recently published a book of his favorite Celebration scenes. Jim has covered the Kennedy Space Center since 2006. His experience has brought a unique perspective to his coverage of first, the space shuttle Program, and now the post-shuttle era, as US space exploration accelerates its dependence on commercial companies. He specializes in converting the often highly technical aspects of the space program into contexts that can be understood and appreciated by average Americans.
Articles By Jim Siegel
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SpaceX prepares for first of many Starlink launches in 2020
December 31st, 20192020 looks to be a big year for space. The next twelve months could see the U.S. regain a long-lost capability and another rover should be sent on its way to the Red Planet. SpaceX is planning to kick off 2020 with the launch of the next batch of Starlink satellites.
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OFT: What went wrong?
December 21st, 2019NASA and Boeing don't seem to know what exactly prevented the OFT Starliner from completing its primary mission objective.
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This Bud’s for you! SpaceX sends ‘King of Beers’ to orbit on CRS-19
December 5th, 2019Propellant? Check. Science experiments? Check. Hardware? Check. Budweiser? Checkity-check!
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Boeing completes test of hyper-critical pad abort system
November 4th, 2019With SpaceX steamrolling ahead toward achieving the goal of sending U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, Boeing took a step of its own today toward accomplishing the same feat.
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‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this…’ Space Wars might be just around the corner
October 26th, 2019Excitement is building as Star Wars aficionados are already rushing the virtual box office to buy tickets for the Dec. 20 release of the long-anticipated final episode of the Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker. But how close are those not in a galaxy "far, far away" away from experiencing actual wars in space?
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Delta IV Medium ends 17-Year run with 100% success
August 25th, 2019ULA's Delta IV Medium rocket, which made its debut flight in 2002, finished its 17-year career by propelling a GPS III satellite into medium Earth orbit.
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Discovery Channel marks NASA’s 60th Anniversary with Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow
October 12th, 2018As a 60th anniversary tribute to NASA’s formation in 1958, the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel will be airing a 90-minute documentary entitled Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow.
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Telestar 18V set for Sunday night liftoff atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9
September 8th, 2018CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Sunday night sky over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 is scheduled to erupt briefly in a blaze of light as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts the Telstar 18 VANTAGE communications satellite into orbit for the Canadian satellite services provider Telesat.
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SES-12 flies to orbit in early morning SpaceX launch
June 4th, 2018CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- SpaceX carried out yet another successful launch, but it didn't retrieve the rocket's first stage, nor did it use the Block 5 version of the launch vehicle. The NewSpace company did, however, work to recover one element of the booster.
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SpaceX prepping Falcon 9 to launch SES-12 mission
May 28th, 2018CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Following the successful launch of a communications satellite on May 11, 2018, from Kennedy Space Center SLC-39A, SpaceX is scheduled to launch another communications satellite from Florida on May 31, 2018, this time from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's SLC-40. The customer is SES, a giant European communications conglomerate. If everything goes as planned, this will be the sixth launch of an SES satellite by SpaceX.
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SpaceX’s Block 5 Falcon 9 another space launch game-changer
May 16th, 2018At a media teleconference before the first flight of the Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined some of the various upgrades to the Falcon 9 on the Block 5 version and revealed that, sometime next year, the company plans to launch, recover, re-fuel and re-launch a rocket within 24 hours.
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Think failure isn’t an option? NASA has a job for you
April 9th, 2018Have you ever envisioned yourself as one of NASA's flight directors overseeing space exploration missions from Houston’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center? Well, now is your chance as the U.S. space agency has recently posted the flight director position on USAJobs.
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TESS scientist explains what the Goldilocks orbit is
February 21st, 2018KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -- NASA is planning on launching the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission about mid-April aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. TESS is planned to operate from a "sweet spot" so to speak, but Goldilocks zones and Goldilocks orbits aren't the same.
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Will the ISS continue beyond 2024?
February 20th, 2018Buried in the middle of his Feb. 12, 2018, statement regarding NASA’s proposed 2019 FY budget, acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot sent a bit of a shock wave through the space community with an announcement that could see the fate of the International Space Station forever altered.
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Launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 with GovSat-1 delayed 24 hours
January 30th, 2018CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With about an hour to go before the launch window opened at 4:25 p.m. EST (21:25 GMT) on Jan. 30, SpaceX scrubbed its attempt to send aloft a Falcon 9 rocket with a communications satellite named GovSat-1, due to a second-stage sensor issue.
