Tag: commercial

UrthaCast progress

7:58 am

The competition heats up: UrthaCast has announced the status of the commissioning of its commercial cameras on ISS for viewing the Earth.

The medium resolution camera has been commissioned and is available for commercial imaging. The high resolution camera, however, has a problem with its pointing system which is requiring troubleshooting.

The Bi-axial Pointing Platform (“BPP”), which controls the pointing of the [High Resolution camera (HRC)], is experiencing difficulties in achieving the pointing control precision needed for the HRC to meet image quality specifications. Our engineering team together with RSC Energia believes it has developed a solution to this problem using existing gyroscopes on the HRC to improve the BPP pointing control. This solution has been successfully tested on the ground. The on-orbit implementation of this solution requires software updates and the installation of additional cabling inside the Zvezda module. These new cables need to be delivered to the International Space Station (ISS). As a result, there will be a several month delay in commissioning the HRC.

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Another ISEE-3 update

2:24 pm

The team trying to resurrect ISEE-3 had very mixed results in its attempt today to get the spacecraft’s propulsion system working.

They managed to get “several instances of thrust,” which suggests there is fuel, the system can function, and that their strategy is on the right track. They did not however get full thrust as hoped, and are not quite sure why the spacecraft only partly responded. They are analyzing the data while they apply to NASA for an extension of their license to transmit to the spacecraft.

This last point is merely a formality. What can NASA do if they continue anyway? Nothing. NASA will say yes, partly because it is good public relations and partly because most of the people at NASA are also fans of this effort.

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The UAE wants to go to Mars

9:31 am

The competition heats up: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced today that it is creating a space agency to build and launch an unmanned mission to Mars by 2021.

The announcement included this statement by his Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai:

Despite all the tensions and the conflicts across the Middle East, we have proved today how positive a contribution the Arab people can make to humanity through great achievements, given the right circumstances and ingredients. Our region is a region of civilisation. Our destiny is, once again, to explore, to create, to build and to civilise. We chose the epic challenge of reaching Mars because epic challenges inspire us and motivate us. The moment we stop taking on such challenges is the moment we stop moving forward.

I wish them luck, since building spaceships and exploring the heavens is a far better occupation that trying to kill Jews. I remain skeptical however. They will have to show real achievement before I will believe this is something more than a simple feel-good public relations stunt by the UAE’s leaders.

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Mark Knopfler – Wild Theme

6:03 pm

An evening pause: Hat tip to Danae for sending me this.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am open to suggestions for future Evening Pauses. Music, engineering, wild nature, comedy, anything with a spark of magic that will brighten our day will be gladly viewed and posted.

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DARPA awards contracts for XS-1 spaceplane

9:31 am

The competition heats up: DARPA has announced contract awards to three companies for the construction of its experimental XS-1 spaceplane, designed to take off and land like a airplane.

The contracts go to Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Masten Space Systems, and have them each respectively partnered with Blue Origin, XCOR, and Virgin Galactic. More details on the Boeing contract can be found here.

The description of the XS program is quite exciting:
» Read more

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Great Britain’s proposed suborbital spaceport locations

9:07 am

The competition heats up: More information was released today describing Great Britain’s suggested spaceport locations.

These spaceports are specifically aimed at the suborbital space tourism market, for American companies like Virgin Galactic or XCOR, or for the developing British company Skylon.

It is interesting that 6 of 8 are located in Scotland, which might very well not be part of the United Kingdom after a vote on separation this fall.

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The next Proton and Angara launches

9:00 am

The competition heats up: Russia has set September 28 as the next launch date for its troubled Proton rocket.

The most interesting detail gleaned from this article however is this:

The Proton-M carrier rocket previously launched on May 16 from Baikonur space center collided with communications satellite Express АМ4R and burned up in the atmosphere above China, leaving Russia without its most powerful telecommunications satellite.

Previous reports had not been very clear about the causes of the May launch failure. All they would say is that “a failed bearing in the steering engine’s turbo pump” had caused the failure about nine minutes into the flight. This report suggests that this failure occurred after separation of the payload and that it then caused the upper stage to collide with the satellite.

Russia is also about to ship its new Angara 5 rocket to the launch site for a planned December launch. This will be the first launch of the Angara configuration that is expected to replace the Proton rocket, and is expected to place a dummy payload into geosynchronous orbit.
» Read more

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John Prine and Iris DeMent – In Spite of Ourselves

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Thanks to Keith for sending me this video. Note that I am open to any recommendations of good videos for posting as an Evening Pause, including music, engineering, comedy, anything quirky or interesting with a spark of originality.

Let me add that if you have something you want to recommend, don’t post the link in the comment. Just say in your comment that you want to recommend something and I will email you direct. I want to view and schedule these posts rather than have them appear in the comments first.

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Falcon 9 launch

8:41 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has successfully launched six Orbcomm commercial satellites into orbit.

The six satellites still must be deployed. We will know if this is successful sometime in the next hour or so. Also, no news yet on SpaceX’s effort to recover the rocket’s first stage after a soft splashdown in the ocean.

Update: All 6 Orbcomm satellites have successfully deployed.

Update 2: From Elon Musk as to the first stage recovery: “Rocket booster reentry, landing burn & leg deploy were good, but lost hull integrity right after splashdown (aka kaboom).”

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A spaceport for Great Britain?

8:38 am

The competition heats up: The government of the United Kingdom today outlined its intention to build its first spaceport by 2018.

The announcement listed eight potential sites, six of which were in Scotland, which is presently threatening to break away from the United Kingdom. This announcement I suspect is less a call for British space exploration and instead a political effort to encourage Scotland to remain in the UK.

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Cygnus launch

9:23 am

All is go for a 12:52 pm launch of Cygnus’s second operational cargo flight to ISS.

If you live on the east coast of the U.S. you should be able to see some part of this launch when it happens.

Cygnus has lifted off.

The main engine has cut off and the first stage has successfully separated.

The second stage has ignited successfully. It has now completed its burn and has separated from the spacecraft. Cygnus is in orbit.

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Air Force certifies Falcon 9

11:21 pm

The competition heats up: The Air Force today certified that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket had completed three successful flights.

This certification is a preliminary okay before the official certification. What it means is that the Air Force is agreeing that the Falcon 9 is capable of launching its satellites, which also means that the official certification is almost certain.

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India’s space program gets a huge budget boost

9:16 am

The competition heats up: The new budget of India’s new conservative government under Narendra Modi has given its space program a 50 percent increase.

It appears that there were increases across the board, including a gigantic increase for their GSLV rocket as well as their manned program.

It also appears that Modi is following in the path of George Bush, at least when it comes to space. He might be a conservative, pro private enterprise and anti-big government, but his approach to building a space industry is decidedly Soviet in style, pumping funds into government agencies so that they can build the rockets and spacecraft. For the moment at least, private companies will be the servants to India’s government space program, not the masters.

In the U.S. and Russia this approach worked for the first generation of rockets and spacecraft, but then ended up a lead weight for later generations. I suspect we shall see the same history play out in India.

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Russian Soyuz launches commercial satellites for Arianespace

9:01 am

The competition heats up: A Soyuz rocket successfully launched four communications satellites from French Guiana yesterday.

I know that I repeatedly pound Arianespace for its high costs and lack of profits, but anyone who thinks this European company, in partnership with the Russians, is going to let its competition grab its customers easily is in for a surprise. They are going to fight back, and have the resources to do it.

The battle is on! It should be a lot of fun to watch over the next decade.

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ISEE-3 might still be saved

3:39 pm

It ain’t dead yet: The private group trying to resurrect ISEE-3 has not yet given up.

[T]he reboot team, led by editor Keith Cowing and entrepreneur Dennis Wingo, CEO of California-based Skycorp Incorporated, isn’t quite ready to give up. One of the project volunteers has suggested that perhaps the nitrogen isn’t actually gone. It may in fact still be there, but dissolved in with the hydrazine.

If that’s the case, Wingo says, ISEE-3 could potentially repressurize the propellant by powering up the tank heaters, raising the temperature up perhaps 10 degrees from the roughly 25 degrees C where it stands now. “If [the idea] has any merit, then we could turn the heaters on and drive at least some of the nitrogen out of solution. That would give us more pressure that just heating the tanks themselves,” Wingo says. “It’s not desperation,” he adds. “There is some good physics behind this.”

Their big problem is that they need to know more about how the nitrogen was stored on the spacecraft. They are asking for help from anyone who is willing to research the problem.

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The effort to resurrect ISEE-3’s is over

9:42 am

The private effort to resurrect the 1980s research probe ISEE-3 has been stymied by a non-working propulsion system.

Before the July 9 attempt, the ISEE-3 Reboot Project thought it had a chance of completing its planned trajectory correction maneuver. The spacecraft’s small hydrazine thrusters were spun up July 3, and systems appeared nominal, Cowing said. On July 8, the spacecraft even managed to perform one of the six multipulse burns that would have set it up for a return to the orbit into which it was launched in 1978.

But further attempts to activate the thrusters July 8 proved unsuccessful, as were all attempts the following day. After eliminating a malfunctioning valve as the cause of the problem, the ISEE-3 Reboot Project was forced to conclude that the satellite’s hydrazine fuel simply was not being pushed through its plumbing at the right pressure to conduct a burn.

The spacecraft is in science mode and will gather data as long as it is in communication range, which will only be for another three months.

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Bigelow Aerospace hiring

7:48 pm

The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace hired two former NASA astronauts today as part of a broader expansion of the company in anticipation of .the completion of its first two private space modules in 2017.

Bigelow said the smallest space station his company plans to fly will require two BA330 modules, each of which has 330 cubic meters of internal space. The company expects to finish building the first two BA330s by 2017, Bigelow said.

Ham and Zamka are former military aviators who have piloted and commanded space shuttle missions. Their NASA and military credentials are part of the appeal for Bigelow, who plans to put both former space fliers to work as recruiters. “I would like to see us have half a dozen astronauts onboard by the end of the year,” Bigelow said.

Each Bigelow Aerospace space station would require about a dozen astronauts, including orbital, ground and backup personnel. The 660-cubic-foot stations would host four paying clients, who would be assisted by three company astronauts responsible for day-to-day maintenance, Bigelow said. Initially, clients and crews would cycle in and out of the stations in 90-day shifts, Bigelow said. Eventually, the company hopes to shorten that cycle to 60 days.

The company had laid off many of its workers several years ago and was essential dormant, waiting for the development of some sort of affordable commercial manned spacecraft capability. It now appears they are expecting SpaceX, Boeing, or Sierra Nevada to succeed in providing this service in the next few years.

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An update on ISEE-3’s resurrection

9:45 am

The engineers trying to resurrect the 1980s ISEE-3 spacecraft have posted an update describing what happened with yesterday’s partly successful engine burn.

The bottom line:

Thruster firings were planned to done in groupings – or “segments” – of 63 firings per segment. The first chart is annotated to show the three firing attempts. The first segment was full duration but only partially successful. The second and third attempts failed. Possible causes (under investigation) include valve malfunction and fuel supply issues.

This doesn’t sound hopeful, but stay tuned as they continue to assess the situation.

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Angara launches

9:20 am

The competition heats up: The first test launch today of Russia’s new Angara rocket was a success, according to Russian reports.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the first stage of the rocket separated four minutes after the liftoff, while the vehicle was flying in the projected area over the southern Barents Sea and in the range of the Russian ground control network. The main engine of the second stage was shut down as planned at 16:08 Moscow Time and the stage along with a payload mockup fell in the projected area of the Kura impact range on the Kamchatka Peninsula 5,700 kilometers from the launch site, 21 minutes after liftoff.

Russia will obviously have to conduct further test launches, including the first orbital test, before it declares Angara operational. Nonetheless, this success gets them closer to replacing the Proton and Zenit rockets and allowing them to decrease their reliance on rockets, spaceports, and components under the control of independent countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.

More details about the Angara rocket family can also be found here.

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Russia to phase out use of Ukrainian-built Soyuz rockets

9:09 am

As part of a major upgrade of its Soyuz rocket family, Russia is also ending its partnership with Ukraine in building those rockets.

The older Soyuz rockets rely on a Ukrainian control system — a relic of the rocket family’s Soviet heritage that in the aftermath of Russia seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March looks like a threat to Russia’s space program. The rockets are based on the same core design that launched Sputnik and Yury Gagarin into space at the dawn of the space age. “The Soyuz-U and Soyuz-FG control systems are analog [systems] made in Ukraine,” Alexander Kirilin, CEO of the Progress Rocket and Space Center in the Volga city of Samara told Interfax on Monday.

However, the Soyuz 2 rockets use a Russian-made digital control system. Aside from further moving Russia’s space industry away from its reliance on Ukrainian components, the digital control system allows the rockets to handle a wider variety of payloads — making the tried-and-tested Russian rocket more versatile than ever before.

It is Russia’s plan to complete the transition to the new wholly Russian Soyuz 2 rockets for ISS missions within the next three years.

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