More details about SpaceShipTwo’s test flight, this time from one of the pilots.
The first powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo could come before year’s end.
The world’s first everything-proof underground luxury community. Fun quote:
The Barstow bunker was built to withstand a 50-megaton nuclear blast 10 miles away, 450mph winds, a magnitude-10 earthquake, 10 days of 1,250°F surface fires, and three weeks beneath any flood. Vicino says that a soon-to-be-installed air-filtration system will also neutralize any biological, chemical or nuclear attacks. The Barstow branch will stock enough food and clothing to sustain 135 people for at least a year, and in a lifestyle that Vicino describes as compact but luxurious, like being on a cruise ship.
The first trapped Chilean miner is expected to be hauled from the mine sometime before midnight tonight.
The possibilities for China’s Chang’e 2 lunar probe include travel far beyond the Moon.
The state of NASA’s commercial crew program. Key quote:
The Obama administration requested $3.3 billion for commercial crew services over the next three years, but a so-called compromise bill forged in the Senate slashed the proposal in half. After months of heated contention, the House of Representatives finally agreed to the Senate authorization bill in late September, calling for $1.6 billion for the commercial program.
A 20 foot diameter asteroid is going to zip past the Earth on Tuesday, passing over East Asia only 28,000 miles away.
The various partners running the ISS are considering using it as a platform to launch an orbital manned mission to the Moon.
Spaceweather.com noted yesterday that the amateur astronomers have reported the X-37B space plane missing. It did not show up when expected, based on its known orbit. Key quote:
It’s possible that the X-37B has landed. More likely, the space plane has maneuvered into a new orbit and will be recovered again in the nights ahead.
Rescue shaft breaks through to Chilean miners.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made its first solo flight and landing today.
The shaft to rescue the trapped Chilean miners should reach them ‘within hours’, according to this BBC report.
A Soyuz rocket launched a new crew of three astronauts to ISS today. Fun quote:
The six [astronauts on ISS] on Nov. 1 will celebrate the 10th anniversary of continuous human presence on the station.
Government space faces budget realities: The European Space Agency is struggling to find the funds to both extend ISS as well as upgrade their cargo carrier so that it can also return cargo from ISS.
Private space moves forward, without NASA: Clark Lindsey at www.rlvnews.com notes that Robert Bigelow — the man behind the first private space station’s — seems poised to announce the first six nations who’ve agreed to rent space on his stations.
The container used to ship a Soyuz capsule to Baikonur was damaged in transport. No word yet on the condition of the capsule, which was scheduled for a December launch to ISS.
The space tourism company Xcor today signed a deal to fly suborbital flights as soon as 2014 from the island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles.
NASA’s technology chief said today that despite the specific demands Congress included in its authorization bill, NASA will make its own decision on the kind of heavy-lift rocket it wants to build.
The Lunar X Prize award for putting the first privately funded robot on the Moon by 2012 is now set at $30 million.
Using the data gathered by Rosetta in its fly-by of the asteroid Lutetia in July, scientists have concluded that the 60 mile diameter asteroid is covered with a deep layer of dusty debris, as much as 2000 feet deep.
The HiRise Camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has released some wonderful new pictures, showing what are called barchan dunes on Mars.
Barchans are crescent-shaped, with the horns of the crescents pointing downwind. One barchan is visible in the upper part of the image, with the Southeast (lower right) horns longer than the other. This trend, along with the position of the steep face of the dune on the South side, indicates that the predominant winds which formed the dunes came from the North.
There are a lot more great images on the websites above.
The second Chinese probe to the Moon did more than take off on Friday. It also rained pieces of metal down on a Chinese villages in Suichuan County, Jiangxi, China.
Virgin Galactic, the company that is building a suborbital rocket to put tourists in space, appears to be delaying the development of its orbital launching system.
Meanwhile, the company resumed capture carry flights of WhiteKnightTwo, with SpaceShipTwo attached, with a five hour test flight on Thursday.
How dare you succeed! The EPA has fined SpaceX $45,600 for hazardous waste violations.
What does this have to do with engineering? Under a plan released by the Obama adminstration today, automakers will be required to magically achieve substantially higher fuel efficiency — between 47 and 62 miles per gallon — by 2025.
