Mars Odyssey is out of safe mode and should be back in full operation by next week.
Want to invest in a spacesuit company? Now you can! (Hat tip Clark Lindsey.)
The answer is 43: An IBM supercomputer today became the fastest in the world.
The competition heats up: China’s Shenzhou-9 capsule successfully docked with Tiengong-1 today and the crew has entered the space module.
The X-37b that has been in orbit for the past 15 months successfully returned to Earth in a runway landing today.
Video of the landing below the fold.
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China has successfully put into orbit its first three person crew, including its first female astronaut, on its first manned space docking mission.
Despite the continuing lack of an agreement, Kazakhstan today gave Russia permission to resume launches from the Baikonur spaceport.
Their new as yet unfinished spaceport in Vostochny must appear increasingly important to the Russians.
On exhibit in New York: A mock mission to Mars, built by an artist using, among other things, duct tape.
We have a date: China’s next manned mission, with one female astronaut aboard, will launch Saturday.
Engineers have successfully tested a spare reaction wheel on Mars Odyssey in their effort to bring the spacecraft back into full operation.
After more than 11 years of non-operational storage, the spare reaction wheel passed preliminary tests on Wednesday, June 12, spinning at up to 5,000 rotations per minute forward and backward. Odyssey engineers plan to substitute it for a reaction wheel they have assessed as no longer reliable. That wheel stuck for a few minutes last week, causing Odyssey to put itself into safe mode on June 8, Universal Time (June 7, Pacific Time).
Copenhagen Suborbitals: The crazy DIY spaceflight project that just might work.
Watch an asteroid a third of a mile across zip past the Earth tonight.
The new colonial movement: China is in its final preparations for the launch of its next manned mission, expected any day now.
This is the key quote from the article:
China aims to build a space station around 2020 based on the space rendezvous and docking technology that is currently being tested. Several components will be sent into space separately before being assembled into a space station through a variety of docking procedures.
Yow! Scientists have developed a genetically altered mosquito that cannot transmit malaria to humans.
Mars Odyssey put itself into safe mode on Friday when it detected problems with one of the three reaction wheels used to orient the spacecraft.
If this space probe goes down, it will make it more difficult to rely data back from Opportunity, now on the Martian surface, and Curiosity, due to land in two months.
The X-37b in orbit for the past fifteen months is set to land this week, possibly even today.
NASA has released more information about the two space telescopes the National Reconnaissance Office has donated to them.
Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.
From Clark Lindsey:
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.
As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.
Want to own your own island? Now you can have it built, and put it wherever you want!
Next up: Taking a look at the test flight planning for Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.
Due to cost overruns, NASA has cancelled the GEM X-ray telescope.
The shuttle prototype Enterprise was damaged on Sunday while being transported by barge to its New York City museum home.
Fifteen picturesque shipwrecks from around the world.
Big news: The military has given NASA two Cold War era spy space telescopes with mirrors comparable to Hubble’s.
They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the field of view of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies advisory panel on astronomy and astrophysics.
Since astronomers have over the past dozen years been remarkably uninterested in launching a replacement for Hubble, they now find themselves in a situation where they might have no optical capabilities at all in space. Hubble is slowing dying from age, and NASA doesn’t have the money to build a new optical space telescope, especially since with any new space telescope proposal the astronomical community has had the annoying habit of demanding more sophistication than NASA can afford.
This announcement however might just save astronomy from becoming blind. Because these spy telescopes are already half built, it will be difficult to add too many bells and whistles. Hire a launch rocket, build the cameras and spectrographs based on the instruments already on Hubble, and get the things in orbit quickly.
Kazakhstan better be worried: Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister paid a call to that country’s under-construction Vostochny spaceport today, enthusing about its possibilities.
Prediction: When Vostochny is completed in 2015, Russia will threaten to abandon its historic launch site in Baikonur. They might do it too, if Kazakhstan refuses to ease its rental terms.
Some details and photos of Sierra Nevada’s captive carry test flight last week of Dream Chaser.
A fascinating look at the space race and what the future held, written in 1959.
The article, reprinted by Forbes, is amazingly detailed, optimistic, yet also cool-headed about the future. For example, consider this quote about the future of manned spaceflight:
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