Tag: engineering

The Russians have now rescheduled for September 30 the next Proton rocket launch.

10:00 am

The competition heats up: The Russians have now rescheduled for September 30 the next Proton rocket launch.

The Russian Proton rocket’s return to flight following its spectacular July 2 failure has been rescheduled for Sept. 30 following a review of a first-stage valve issue and discussions between the Russian and Kazakh governments over launch safety issues.

They claim the main reason for the delay was the issues of clean-up following the July 2 launch crash, but that “first-stage valve issue” intrigues me. They have been very closed-mouth about it, yet it very clearly existed.

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A lot of famous people have bought tickets to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo but not William Shatner: He’s apparently afraid of flying!

9:50 am

A lot of famous people have bought tickets to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo but not William Shatner: He’s apparently afraid of flying!

That’s according to Richard Branson. Shatner says instead that it’s the price of the ticket. “He wanted me to go up and pay for it and I said, ‘Hey, you pay me and I’ll go. I’ll risk my life for a large sum of money’. But he didn’t pick me up on my offer.”

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Engineers have pushed the four orbiting Cluster satellites into their closest configuration yet.

9:45 am

Flying in formation: Engineers have pushed the four orbiting Cluster satellites into their closest configuration yet.

In an orbital reconfiguration that will help to maintain the mission’s life span, two of the four satellites achieved their closest-ever separation on 19 September, closing to within just 4 km of each other as they orbited at up to 23 000 km/h high above Earth. “We’re optimising the Cluster formation so that the separation between Cluster 1 and the duo of Cluster 3 and 4 – which are on almost identical orbits – is kept below 100 km when the formation crosses Earth’s magnetic equator,” says Detlef Sieg, working on Cluster flight dynamics at ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

This close formation will provide scientists better data, as they are finding that the Earth’s magnetosphere is far more complex than expected.

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Arianespace has signed a contract to build 18 more Ariane 5 rockets.

9:13 am

The competition heats up: Arianespace has signed a contract to build 18 more Ariane 5 rockets.

This order takes the number of Ariane 5 launchers in production for Arianespace to 38, and guarantees the continued provision of launch services for the European operator’s customers at the Guiana Space Centre through to the end of the decade.

Without doubt Arianespace is now in a solid position through the end of the decade. What will happen to them, however, when Falcon 9 and other cheaper rockets begin to fly regularly will be the real story. They have not yet found a way to cut their costs.

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Voyager 1’s future.

9:08 am

Voyager 1’s future.

Voyager 1 has enough nuclear fuel to keep doing science through to 2025, and then it will be dead, adrift. On its current trajectory, the probe should eventually end up within 1.5 light years of a star in Camelopardalis, a northern constellation that looks like a cross between a giraffe and a camel. No one knows if there are any planets around that star, nor if aliens will be in residence by the time the probe arrives. “But if they are there, maybe they will capture Voyager 1,” says mission scientist Tom Krimigis of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

In addition to the above silliness, the article gives a good summary of the real data that Voyager 1 is sending back about interstellar space.

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