The first launch of Japan’s new Epsilon rocket was scrubbed today at T-19 seconds.
The press releases are very unclear, which is typical for the Japanese. From my perspective, this scrub is hardly a disaster for a new rocket, and is in fact a good sign. Better for the rocket systems to recognize a problem and abort than for it to launch anyway and fail.
The launch of the first demo mission of Orbital Sciences’s Cygnus capsule to ISS has now been officially scheduled for September 17.
The Russians have now fired three executives as a result of their investigation into last month’s Proton launch disaster.
This is in conjunction with hiring an American to take over quality control.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada’s engineering test vehicle of its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle completed its first capture carry flight test yesterday.
The test, which saw the lifting body space vehicle lifted by a Sikorsky S-64 to around 12,400 ft above the dry lakebed, follows completion of tow tests earlier this month. … During the Aug 22 flight the Dream Chaser’s flight computer, guidance, navigation and control systems were tested along with its landing gear and nose skid, which were deployed during the sortie.
How one man saved $17,000 on the cost of a surgery.
On Tuesday NASA released what it calls a new “space exploration roadmap,” outlining the agency’s goals for the human exploration of space over the next few decades.
Normally I’d say, who cares? The space agency puts these kinds of PR roadmaps together periodically. None of them really ever mean that much. And in truth, this particular report doesn’t mean that much either. However, what makes this “Global Plan” interesting and worth mentioning is the participants who wrote it. It seems that NASA and the Obama administration didn’t do it alone.
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The competition heats up: Japan’s unveiled its new Epsilon rocket yesterday, scheduled for its first launch next week.
Epsilon is a low-cost, high-performance, solid-fuel rocket co-developed by JAXA and IHI AEROSPACE Co.,Ltd. and designed to launch scientific satellites. Epsilon features the world’s first innovative launch system called “Mobile Launch Control” which allows for built-in checks to be conducted autonomously within the rocket’s system. This allows staff to focus on high-level monitoring, making overall performance very smooth. A spokesman joked that it is so easy to control that staff could monitor the rocket on their laptops while at Starbucks.
In the past Japan has not been very good at building cheap and efficient rockets. We shall see how this one does.
The fuel leak that scrubbed yesterday’s launch of India’s GSLV rocket will likely cause at least a week’s delay before another launch attempt.
The launch today of India’s homemade Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) was scrubbed when a fuel leak was spotted at T-74 minutes.
India has had trouble getting this powerful rocket off the ground successfully, with four previous launch failures. If they succeed this time, however, they will then have the ability to build their own rocket, capable of putting commercial payloads into geosynchronous orbit.
It appears there is some “dissatisfaction” among Kazakhstan officials over the cleanup from July’s spectacular Proton rocket crash.
I think the Russians are probably rushing the clean-up in order to begin launch operations as soon as possible, and this is what Kazakhstan finds objectionable.
A plane you can drive to the airport.
After landing the wings fold up and the plane becomes legal to drive on the roads. With video.
