The competition heats up: In its effort to build Ariane 6 by 2020, Airbus Safran has begun testing of that rocket’s upper stage Vinci engine.
This test phase, set to last until September, will include running the engine repeatedly as well as for as long as 1,000 seconds. Once they have determined the engine’s design, behavior, and overall thrust, they will be able to design and build the upper stage.
The competition heats up: Orbital ATK today successfully completed a 30 second test fire of the first stage of its redesigned Antares rocket, using new Russian rocket engines.
The primary goal of the test was to verify the functionality of the integrated first stage, including new engines, modified Stage 1 core, avionics, thrust vector control and pad fueling systems in an operational environment. During the test, a number of operational milestones were met including full propellant loading sequence, launch countdown and engine ignition and shut down commands, as well as multiple throttle settings including full engine power. The test also validated the launch pad’s operation, including propellant tanking and the use of the water deluge system to protect the pad from damage and for noise suppression.
Orbital ATK will now purge and clean the engines of residual propellants and return the first stage used in this test to the Horizontal Integration Facility for full reconditioning prior to its use on the OA-7 mission slated for later this year. The Orbital ATK team will continue to prepare the Antares rocket that will launch the OA-5 mission, which is in the final stages of integration, systems testing and check-out in preparation for launch this summer.
They hope to launch a Cygnus capsule on Antares around July 6.
During a successful Soyuz rocket launch of a Russian Glonass GPS satellite last week, it appears that the engine for the rocket’s upper stage cut off prematurely, requiring the third stage to fire longer to get the satellite into its proper orbit.
This scenario is almost identical to what happened with the most recent Atlas 5 launch. There is as yet no word on why it happened, or if the Russians plan to investigate it.
In the heat of competition: XCOR has laid off the staff working on its Lynx suborbital spaceplane.
The company has apparently decided to focus on those things that are generating revenues. Lynx was years behind schedule, unfinished with no prospect for profit, as it was only a prototype, not the spaceplane that could be used to fly tourists.
As much as I am not surprised (I have been skeptical of XCOR’s Lynx suborbital project since they announced it in 2008), I am saddened, because I really did want them to succeed.
NASA engineers today successfully completed the expansion of the Bigelow BEAM test module on ISS.
SpaceX has released a high speed version of the camera view taken from the camera mounted on the Falcon 9 first stage that successfully landed on a barge on Friday.
I have embedded that video below the fold. Quite entertaining, though it emphasizes how much the flight resembles a high speed roller coaster ride.
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The competition heats up: As part of its XS-1 spaceplane development program DARPA this week put out a request for proposals for companies to build an experimental space plane capable of launching 10 times in 10 days for a cost of no more than $5 million.
NASA will try again on Saturday to expand the privately built BEAM module on ISS.
They think the reason the module didn’t inflate as planned the first time is because it has been packed ready for launch for more than fifteen months, ten months longer than originally planned.
That extra time in a tight squeeze might explain why the first inflation attempt didn’t go as planned. BEAM’s Kevlar-like fabric “layers have a memory to them,” Lisa Kauke, BEAM deputy program manager at Bigelow Aerospace, said during today’s teleconference. “The longer they’re packed, the more they’re compressed, and then it takes a little while for the shape to return.” This interpretation is bolstered by the fact that BEAM continued to expand overnight Thursday into Friday morning, even though no more air was being pumped in, Crusan said.
The competition heats up: Rocket Lab has successfully tested the second stage engine of its Electron rocket.
They are aiming for their first commercial launch in 2017.
Virgin Atlantic’s first-ever Boeing 747 jumbo jet has been listed for sale on eBay with a starting bid of more than a quarter million dollars and a ‘buy it now’ price of $900,000 (£615,000). The retired double-decker plane, called Lady Penelope, was taken out of service last year and is gathering dust at an aircraft boneyard, but it could see new life as a hotel or restaurant, depending on the buyer’s intentions.
Here is the ebay listing.
Sadly, it can no longer fly as its engines have been removed. You will have to take it apart and ship it yourself.
SpaceX is beginning to make the landings of its Falcon 9 first stage routine. They just successfully landed another first stage on their drone ship, even though this was once again a difficult geosynchronous satellite launch with high speeds and limited available fuel.
It also appears that they will also successfully place the commercial satellite in orbit.
The competition heats up: Blue Origin has completed construction of one of two new test cells for the development of its BE-4 rocket engine, only seven months after the company made the decision to build them.
Microsoft and Facebook have announced plans to lay a trans-Atlantic communications cable from Virginia to Spain.
Running from Virginia Beach, Virgina to Bilbao, Spain, MAREA (which is Spanish for “tide”), it will be the first cable to connect the US to southern Europe, over a distance of 6,600 km (4,100 miles). From Blibao, it will connect to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with the goal of improving speed and reliability. For Microsoft this means improvements for users of its cloud services, such as Bing, Office 365, Skype, Xbox Live, and Microsoft Azure, while for Facebook it means improvements for users of its eponymous social network.
I find this story very puzzling. The whole reason communication satellites exist is because they have historically been far cheaper to build and launch with far greater capacity than ocean cables. Thus, the decision of these companies to go with an undersea cable instead of satellites suggests that something has changed in that equation, though I can’t see what. Have undersea cables improved so much that they have a bigger capacity than satellites, so much bigger that it compensates for the higher cost of installation and maintenance?
The competition heats up: The next Chinese lunar probe will be an unmanned sample return mission
They hope to fly it in the second half of 2017.
The competition heats up: The next New Shepard test flight will try to land the capsule with only two of three parachutes.
No date for the flight was announced.
The competition heats up: Planetary Resources, the company that claims its goal is to mine asteroids, has raised $21 million to build and launch an Earth resources satellite.
They plan to create a 10-satellite constellation to provide this data commercially.
While everything this company is doing will eventually make asteroid mining easier and more effective, nothing they are doing now has anything to do with mining asteroids. Their first project was to build a prototype orbiting telescope to look for asteroids. This second project will sell data about the Earth.
The 30-second static fire engine test of the Antares first stage and new Russian engine has now been scheduled for May 31.
The window for the engine test, or hot fire, is 5 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. EDT. Backup test dates run through June 5. Completion of the test will be noted on the Wallops’ Facebook and Twitter sites. During the test, the upgraded Antares dual RD-181 rocket engines will fire for 30 seconds at maximum 100% power (thrust) while the first stage of the test rocket will be held down on the pad. The hot fire will demonstrate the readiness of the rocket’s first stage and the launch pad fueling systems to support upcoming flights.
If all goes well, they hope to launch Antares with a Cygnus capsule in early July.
The competition heats up: Orbital ATK today revealed plans to build what it calls the Next Generation Launcher designed to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
The first stage would use a variation of the solid rocket boosters that ATK built for the space shuttle. The second stage would be bought from Blue Origin.
The competition heats up: Iridium has announced the availability of its own location technology comparable to GPS and using the company’s constellation of satellites.
Iridium Communications Inc. has introduced its Satellite Time and Location (STL) service, an alternative or complement to traditional indoor and outdoor location-based technologies, and declared it ready for use. STL’s position, navigation and timing (PNT) technology is deployed through Iridium’s 66 cross-linked, low-earth orbit satellite constellation. Through Iridium satellites and in GNSS receivers, STL technology can work to verify GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and other navigation services, and also can serve as an alternative for those services when GPS signals are degraded or unavailable. STL also can provide an alternative source of time when testing GPS signals.
Essentially, for practically nothing, using satellites and technology already in orbit, they have created their own system that can both compete and complement the expensive government-built GPS systems.
The competition heats up: The United Kingdom has cancelled its spaceport competition to chose one spaceport and instead has announced it will allow any one of the competing locations to operate if they can want and can meet some licensing requirements.
In other words, instead of the government dictating one location as the nation’s spaceport, it will allow different locations to compete for the space launch business.
The link has few details, though a closer look at subject of the British space effort can be found here.
