India has set January 5 as the launch date for its next attempt to launch is home-built GSLV rocket.
An update on the Google Lunar X-Prize competition.
A number of teams have dropped out, narrowing the competition to eighteen teams.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has set December 31 as the launch date for its next Falcon 9 commercial launch.
They are picking up the pace. This will be SpaceX’s second commercial launch in December and its second geosynchronous launch. If they prove they can keep this pace through 2014 they will not only clear away a large amount of the launch backlog, they will establish themselves as a solid player in the launch market, a company that the competition must fear due to its low prices.
Bad weather scrubbed a SpaceShipTwo test flight yesterday.
It was unclear whether this would have been a powered flight. The scrub also ends any chance of another test flight before the end of the year.
Madness: A company fires an employee because he put out a fire.
Bowers knew that his actions were going against company policy, but he believed that in this instance the customers urgent need came first. “When the guy came in and said his dashboard was on fire I grabbed the fire extinguisher and I followed him outside and sure enough his dashboard was on fire,” Bowers said. They quickly put out the fire and Bowers returned to his post.
He was later called into the store director’s office where he was suspended for his actions. “The one supervisor told me that my heart was in the right place, but my brain wasn’t,” Bowers said. Later that week, he was fired from his job for not following company policy.
The company is Meijer’s, which is going to discover this is a major public relations disaster. Just read the comments at the link.
NASA engineers have decided to go ahead with a series of spacewalks to repair the ISS cooling system, thereby delaying the Cygnus cargo mission until January.
The EVAs will take place on December 21, 23 and 25 followed by a Russian Spacewalk on the 27th and a Beta-Angle Cut-out beginning on December 29. That means that the earliest launch opportunity for Cygnus is January 9, 2014 (local time) – pending the successful execution of the contingency EVAs.
Update: The Orbital Sciences press announcement says their launch can happen no earlier than January 13.
Arianespace has ordered the construction of an additional 18 Ariane 5 rockets.
This construction order, if it reflects actual launch contracts, gives Arianespace some margin while it works to find ways to compete in the launch business, as expressed by the last sentence of the above article: “Astrium managers recently called for a thorough overhaul of the Ariane contractor mix with a view to reducing prices to stay viable in the competitive world commercial launch market.”
Aerojet has successfully completed engine tests for the launch abort system on Boeing’s CST-100 manned capsule.
“In the past several weeks, the Aerojet Rocketdyne team conducted a series of eight tests on two Launch Abort Engines meeting or exceeding all test parameters,” said Aerojet Rocketdyne Program Manager, Terry Lorier. “The tests demonstrated engine performance for multiple mission duty cycles and proved operation and durability under extreme operating conditions. The success of this most recent test series clears the way for our team to proceed into qualification and production of the engine in the next phase of the program.”
The competition heats up: Germany has funded a study to look into using Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser for its space operations.
Named DC4EU (Dream Chaser for European Utilization), the project is to explore ways in which the Dream Chasercan be used to cover German and European requirements for the transportation of payloads and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and for deployment as a manned or unmanned space vehicle allowing German and European scientists to conduct research under weightless conditions over extended periods of time. Given the capability which the Dream Chaser has for reaching orbits at a substantially greater altitude than the ISS, the study will determine the extent to which it is able to supply satellites or remove decommissioned satellites from their orbits.
All hail competition and private enterprise! Sierra Nevada designed it. Sierra Nevada built it. Sierra Nevada owns it. If NASA decides it doesn’t want to buy it, there is no reason the company can’t sell it to someone else, for profit.
China outlines its plans for its next two unmanned lunar probes, with the second targeted as a 2017 sample return mission.
Key quote:
The new mission planned for 2017 would mark the third and final phase of China’s robotic lunar exploration program and pave the way for possibly landing an astronaut on the moon after 2020.
As I mentioned last night, the soft landing on Saturday demonstrated they are developing the technology to land a manned vehicle safely on the Moon. To return samples safely would demonstrate they are developing the technology to return that manned vehicle safely as well.
Update: Yutu did not land anywhere near its planned landing location.
China had originally publicized a location in the Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows) — a level area thoroughly surveyed by a previous Chinese mission — as the landing spot. Local media even stated that Chang’e 3 landed there. But Chinese scientists have since confirmed that the spacecraft landed slightly to the east, in the northern part of Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
It is unclear whether this was a late change or the result of a technical problem.
NASA has decided that Dream Chaser met all its engineering milestones during its test flight in October, despite the landing gear failure.
This means that Sierra Nevada will get its next payment under the commercial crew program.
The Cygnus cargo mission to ISS has been delayed by at least one day as NASA managers struggle to deal with the station’s coolant pump failure.
As noted in earlier reports, it appears they are considering a series of spacewalks to try to fix the problem.
The coolant systems failure on ISS might delay next week’s Cygnus cargo mission.
[T]he reduced cooling capability means there’s less of a safety margin on the station. Todd said mission managers don’t want to risk having the Cygnus come in for a hookup under such conditions. “While we’re sitting at one loop, we’re somewhat vulnerable,” he said.
The logic here escapes me. It suggests they will stop all cargo missions to ISS until the coolant problem is solved. However, what if they can’t solve it without a spacewalk? To do that spacewalk they have to deliver an upgraded spacesuit to the station to replace the suit that had water leak problems in July, and that delivery is not scheduled until late February when the next Dragon cargo launch is scheduled.
Maybe they are considering putting that replacement suit on the Cygnus capsule so it can arrive quickly. If so, that would justify delaying the Cygnus launch for a few days.
More details about the situation here.
China’s Chang’e 3 lunar orbiter has lowered its orbit around the Moon.
This is in preparation for the planned landing of its rover on December 14.
SpaceShipTwo flew another glide test today.
Not a powered flight however. See Doug Messier’s comments here about the slow pace of these powered tests, and how it raises questions about the company’s claim that it will be flying commercially next year.
India’s Mangalyaan Mars probe successfully completed its first midcourse correction maneuver today.
As with the images the probe took of Earth, the success of this maneuver demonstrates the ability of the probe’s engineers to control, operate, and precisely point the spacecraft’s engine. It also proves that engine works as designed.
Here’s an interesting cultural tidbit: Of the 200,000 people who have applied to Mars One (see my previous post below) to go on its proposed one-way mission to Mars, India has the second most applicants after the U.S.
Mars One applicants come from over 140 countries; the largest numbers are from the US (24 per cent), India (10 per cent), China (6 per cent), Brazil (5 per cent), UK, Canada, Russia and Mexico (4 per cent), Philippines, Spain, Colombia and Argentina (2 per cent), and Australia, France, Turkey, Chile, Ukraine, Peru, Germany, Italy and Poland (1 per cent).
A private unmanned mission to Mars by 2018?
Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, Mars One founder and CEO, told reporters the foundation has signed contracts with two major aerospace firms, Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology, to develop mission concept studies, a first step toward eventual construction and launch.
The lander will be based on the design of the 2007 Phoenix Mars lander that Lockheed Martin developed for NASA. The communications satellite — the first such “geostationary” comsat in orbit around the red planet — will incorporate technologies developed by Surrey and used in a variety of operational spacecraft.
Mission concept studies are of course essential before you begin construction, but they are also a far cry from actual construction. I’ve seen literally hundreds of similar concept studies about someone’s big space plans with no subsequent follow up. Thus, I will only begin to take Mars One serious when they actually start cutting metal.
The failure of a Chinese Long March rocket to put a commercial satellite into orbit earlier this week was caused by a malfunction in the rocket’s third stage.
Orbital Sciences, having delayed the launch of its first operational Cygnus cargo mission to ISS by one day, has named the spacecraft after the late astronaut Gordon Fullerton.
Apropos my comment here, Rand Simberg superbly summarizes the serious threat SpaceX poses for the older space launch companies.
The competition heats up: Russia’s deputy prime minister is pushing to accelerate the completion of Russia’s new spaceport in Vostochny.
The first scheduled launch is now planned for 2015, but this article suggests they are trying to make it happen by the fall of 2014.
A Brazilian earth research satellite was lost today when a Chinese Long March rocket failed to put it into orbit.
The cause of the failure is not yet known. This failure, however, is a strong boost for SpaceX, as China is its strongest competitor in terms of price.
Tbe competition heats up: International Launch Services ((ILS) has successfully launched its Russian Proton rocket to put another commercial communications satellite into orbit.
This launch solidifies the recovery of the Proton rocket since the disastrous July launch. With the Russian government forcing a consolidation of all Russian aerospace companies into one government owned cooperation, however, it is unclear what will happen to ILS and Khrunichev (the Russian company that makes the Proton).
Google Lunar X-Prize competitor Moon Express has unveiled its lunar lander, scheduled to soft land on the Moon in 2015.
Moon Express is generally considered the leader in this lunar landing X-Prize competition, and this story adds weight to that consensus.
Let the space price war begin.
Two money quotes:
This latest launch is bad news for Russia, Europe, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. SES paid $55 million to SpaceX for the launch; rivals typically charge $100 million to $200 million. SpaceX has a backlog of about $4 billion worth of launches, many for commercial customers that it can now begin to serve.
and this:
We’ll really get a sense of SpaceX’s abilities over the next year. The company plans to launch rockets at a much more ferocious clip, to refine their reusability and to prepare for sending humans to the International Space Station. You can also expect to see SpaceX tormented by politicians with ties to existing launch contractors and military suppliers. May we live in interesting times.
Some more details about the impending takeover and overhaul of the Russian space industry by the Russian government.
Sadly, Russian culture is strongly top-down and authoritarian. After two decades of wild freedom — when they claimed a large share of the launch market and made a lot of money — they are now returning to their centralized ways. It will not work.
The competition heats up: Blue Origin today revealed details of its successful tests of its BE-3 hydrogen rocket engine.
More details here.
All is go for today’s Falcon 9 launch with less than four minutes left in the countdown. You can watch it live here.
We have liftoff. The real moment of truth on this launch will be once the rocket is in orbit. Can its upper stage relight to lift the SES satellite to geosynchronous orbit?
The rocket is now in orbit. The final engine burn and payload separation will occur within the hour.
The second stage engine burn has been successful. We now await payload separation.
The payload has separated successfully and has been delivered to its planned orbit.
With this successful launch SpaceX is poised to dominate the launch industry. Every other launch company has got to cut its prices in half, or more, in order to compete.
In a 376-5 bi-partisan vote, the House has approved a one year extension to the liability exemption of the 2004 Space Amendments Act.
Though this is helpful, it still leaves intact the regulations imposed by that 2004 law, all of which make difficult the future of space tourism. That this extension was passed in conjunction with an effort by Congress to overhaul the law is encouraging.
