Turf war: SpaceX has sued a NASA safety expert (with ties to the Ares rocket program) who questioned the safety of the Falcon 9 rocket.
This ain’t good. One of the reasons ESA controllers recently put the comet probe Rosetta into hibernation for two and a half years was in order to buy time to solve a serious technical problem.
Mission managers said the hibernation will permit Rosetta to rest its four reaction wheels, two of which have shown signs of degradation. The satellite needs three to function, and one of the two problem wheels will be used only as a spare when the satellite is awakened in January 2014 in preparation for its approach to a comet.
During a tanking test of the space shuttle Atlantis today a valve to the main engines leaked, requiring replacement and raising questions whether the July 8 launch date can be met.
Second X-51 hypersonic flight crashes prematurely.
After what the US Air Force described as a ‘flawless’ flight to the launch point aboard a Boeing B-52 mothership, the X-51 was successfully boosted to Mach 5.0 by a rocket booster. The Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne scramjet engine successfully ignited using its initial fuel, ethylene. During the immediate transition to JP-7, the conventional fuel that makes the X-51 unique, an inlet unstart occurred. A subsequent attempt to restart and reorient to optimal conditions was unsuccessful.
SpaceShipTwo completes two glide test flights within twenty-four hours.
The world’s oldest functioning light bulb: 110 years old.
Don’t bet on it: A memo signed today by a senior NASA official marks the end of the Constellation program.
All this does is make the name change of the program-formerly-called-Constellation official. The pork continues nonetheless!
A testbed for testing the robotic refueling of satellites will be installed on ISS on last shuttle flight.
This whole testbed is the brainchild of Frank Cepollina, the man behind all of the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions. Until recently it was doubtful there was room for this project on any shuttle mission. That he nonetheless managed to get it on the last flight is another testament to Cepollina’s incredible ability to get things done. And if the tests work on ISS, NASA will then consider launching operational systems for refueling several perfectly usable climate satellites now in orbit.
SpaceX gets another launch contract for its Falcon 9.
European lifting body entry spacecraft is about to get its final approval before construction.
Scaled Composites continues to ramp up the test flight program of SpaceShipTwo. More here.
The modern American space effort: Apollo spacesuits head to the museum.
China’s second lunar probe, Chang’e 2, has been boosted out of lunar orbit and beyond.
The second X-51 hypersonic flight is now scheduled for the week of June 13.
A camera has been installed on the last shuttle external tank so that its destruction in the atmosphere can be observed.
Opportunity’s target on the rim of Endeavour crater has been dubbed “Spirit Point” by the science team in honor of the now defunct rover.
Human bones were part of the cargo on board the Soyuz capsule launched to ISS today.
“The fragments of human bones will be used to study the causes and dynamics of decalcination of bone tissue in a long space flight,” the head of the experiment, Tatiana Krasheninnikova told Itar-Tass. The problem of decalcination is a headache for medics responsible for spacemen’s health. Researches in this area are conducted by scientists from many ISS member states. However it is impossible to take sample of spacemen’s bones, only their urine is being examined, and a complete picture of dynamics of changes in human bones is not clear, she noted.
A NASA Inspector General report issued today [pdf] notes continuing worries about the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for launch later this year.
Remaining Unresolved Technical Issues: Although Project managers have overcome the majority of technical issues that led to the [2009] launch delay, as of March 2011 three significant technical issues remain unresolved. . . . Because of technical issues related to these three and other items, Project managers must complete nearly three times the number of critical tasks than originally planned in the few months remaining until launch. [emphasis mine]
A bright future for commercial space: A market research firm predicts the launching of more than 1,600 satellites, worth $250 billion, in the next fifteen years.
A new crew, launched by Russia, is heading to the International Space Station.
There was a small fire in Endeavour’s landing gear when it landed last week.
NASA has finally released the photos of Endeavour docked to ISS, taken from a departing Soyuz.
And still no one has died from this particular failure: Japan confirms that all three nuclear reactors melted down after the quake and tsunami.
In new research at CERN physicists now have captured atoms of antimatter for more than 15 minutes.
An evening pause: More here.
The first test flight of the Copenhagen Suborbitals rocket, designed to carry one passenger, launched successfully today, though there were problems with the parachutes.
The Russian/ESA Mars 500 mission has completed a year of its 520-day simulated flight to Mars.
The crew, who spent 250 days working on maintenance and scientific experiments before a 30-day stint performing tasks on a simulated Martian surface, are currently on their “return trip” to Earth.
This simulated all-male flight is going better than the last:
In 1999, an experiment in the same Moscow warehouse fell to pieces after a Russian team captain forced a kiss on a Canadian woman, and two Russian crewmembers had a bloody fistfight.
