Aldrin condition stable
This update into Buzz Aldrin’s health condition says that his condition is stable and appears to recovering. Apparently the problem was “fluid in his lungs”, which suggests pneumonia.
Year: 2016
Japanese company developing suborbital mini-shuttle
The competiion heats up: A private Japanese company is developing a sub-orbital mini-shuttle capable of carrying up to eight people, and hope to fly it by 2023.
An unmanned trial run of the prototype to an altitude of 100 kilometers is scheduled for 2018, and if a manned mission is successfully achieved by 2020, the company hopes to commence its space travel enterprise by the end of 2023. The price of a trip into space is aimed to be about 14 million yen — which is approximately 70 percent of that announced by American company Virgin Galactic. PD Aerospace aims to take passengers to an altitude of 100 kilometers, where they will be able to enjoy a “zero-gravity floating experience” for about 5 minutes, before returning to Earth.
They are entering this competition very late. Considering how slowly Virgin Galactic has moved, though, they still might beat them into orbit.
Japan developing small rocket for commercial smallsats
The competition heats up: Canon has joined a new project by the Japanese space agency JAXA to develop a small rocket for commercial smallsats.
The three-stage rocket is an upgrade to JAXA’s two-stage SS-520, which carries instruments for research observations. Measuring 52cm in diameter and less than 10 meters in length, the new version will cost less than one-tenth as much to launch as leading rockets and is expected to be used to lift microsatellites in orbit. An initial launch is slated for early next year from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Fourth Google Lunar X-Prize team gets launch deal
The competition heats up: TeamIndus, based in India, has signed a contract with ISRO to launch its Google Lunar X-Prize rover as a secondary payload on a Indian PSLV rocket.
This is the fourth X-Prize team to announce a launch contract. According to the rules, the teams have until the end of the year to obtain a contract or else they are out of the competition. We should therefore expect more of these announcements in the coming weeks.
New astronomy webpage and grants devoted to next year’s eclipse
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has launched both a new grant program and a astronomy webpage devoted to the Great American eclipse that will cross the entire lower 48 states next August.
The eclipse occurs on August 21, and will cut a strip from Oregon to South Carolina.
December 1, 2016 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold. The first half was devoted almost entirely in a discussion of the sad state of the Russian space program.
» Read more
Cygnus fire experiments a success
The fire experiments that were done on the Cygnus cargo freighter after it left ISS two weeks ago have been declared a success.
Saffire-II burned nine different samples, in an effort to gauge the flammability of various materials in a microgravity environment. These 12-by-2-inch (30 by 5 centimeters) samples included silicon of different thicknesses; a cotton-fiberglass blend; plexiglass; and Nomex, a commercially available material that’s used in spacecraft on cargo bags and as a fire barrier, NASA officials said. Everything went well during the experiment, they added: All nine samples burned as planned, and the Saffire-II team collected more than 100,000 images. All data had come back down to Earth by Friday (Nov. 25), at which point Saffire-II achieved “complete mission success,” NASA officials wrote in an update.
This was the second set of fire tests. There are plans for a third on a future Cygnus freighter.
SpaceX sets Dec 16 for next launch
SpaceX has tentatively scheduled December 16 as the date for its first launch since the September 1 Falcon 9 launchpad explosion.
The launch will place 10 Iridium satellites into orbit. It will also mean that the delay after the explosion was just over 3.5 months.
Megan Lee – Winter Wonderland
An evening pause: December has arrived, which to me is when the Christmas season should really begin. And what better way to start it but with this incredibly happy rendition of this classic.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Buzz Aldrin evacuated from South Pole due to health issue
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin was today evacuated from U.S. South Pole station due to a worsening health condition.
Aldrin, 86, is in stable condition after “his condition deteriorated” while visiting Antarctica, according to White Desert, which organizes luxury tourism trips to the icy continent. The group said Aldrin was evacuated on the first available flight out of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to the McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast under the care of a doctor with the U.S. Antarctic Program. He then was flown to Christchurch, New Zealand, and arrived at about 4:25 a.m. local time Friday (10:25 a.m. Thursday ET), according to the National Science Foundation, which provided the flight for Aldrin.
They have not released much information about his condition, other than saying that Aldrin is in good spirits.
Russia Progress freighter lost during launch
Due to what appears to be the failure of the third stage of its Soyuz rocket, a Russian Progress freighter bringing supplies to ISS was lost.
The Russian space agency — Roscosmos — confirmed the demise of the Progress MS-04 cargo craft in a statement, saying the automated spaceship was lost as it flew nearly 120 miles (190 kilometers) over the Tuva Republic in Southern Russia. Engineers lost telemetry during the Soyuz rocket’s third stage engine burn, and most of the vehicle’s fragments burned up in the atmosphere, Roscosmos said.
The consequences of this failure are numerous:
- The cargo failures to ISS have been a continuing problem. Despite significant redundancy, every single cargo freighter has had failures or delays in the past two years.
- The failure of the Soyuz rocket is a major concern, since this is the rocket that we depend on to bring humans to ISS. Nor is this the first time this year that the third stage had issues. In May the third stage cut off prematurely.
- This failure, combined with the other quality control problems Russia has experienced in the past few years with the Soyuz capsule and the Proton rocket, adds to the concerns.
It now becomes even more imperative for the U.S. to get its own manned spacecraft capability back.
LIGO 25% more sensitive
After being shutdown for almost a full year for an upgrade to make it 25% more sensitive, the gravitational wave detector LIGO has resumed observations.