Update of Discovery’s launch status
An update of Discovery’s launch status, including possible launch dates.
An update of Discovery’s launch status, including possible launch dates.
An update of Discovery’s launch status, including possible launch dates.
This week the Russians will give “final exams” to the main and backup crews for the next expedition to ISS.
Though NASA constantly rates its astronauts, it does not give them “exams.” This whole procedure (as well as how this Russian article is written) gives a nice flavor of the cultural differences between the U.S. and Russia.
Is the mission of the X-37B space plane almost complete?
Is this real, or a call for funding? The Russian space company Energia says it will begin work next year on nuclear engines for Russia’s space program.
A prototype solar sail was launched from Alaska on Friday. If it unfurls as planned, it will be the U.S.’s first solar sail success after several failures.
Better late than never: The FAA today issued a license to SpaceX, allowing it to bring its Dragon capsule back to Earth after launch.
An update on the efforts to rescue 29 trapped New Zealand miners.
Via Clark Lindsey, it appears that NASA has taken from storage its two X-34 suborbital spaceships and is considering returning the ships to flight status.
The new space race: Virgin Galactic and KLM Airlines.
Hooray for private space! Future tests of SpaceShipTwo will be even more challenging.
Gas explosion today in a New Zealand coal mine has trapped 27 miners.
How the U.S. snoops on Russian nukes from space.
Hooray for private space! SpaceShipTwo successfully completed its third glide flight yesterday.
NASA managers have once again delayed the launch of Discovery, now set for no earlier than December 3.
Almost literally, the probe Deep Impact flew through a snowstorm when it flew past Comet Hartley 2 on November 4. Below is one of the best pictures from the moment. More images can be found here. Key quote:
[The images] revealed a cometary snow storm created by carbon dioxide jets spewing out tons of golf-ball to basketball-sized fluffy ice particles from the peanut-shaped comet’s rocky ends. At the same time, a different process was causing water vapor to escape from the comet’s smooth mid-section. This information sheds new light on the nature of comets and even planets.
Note that all the close-up images taken by Deep Impact are going to be slightly out of focus, as the camera was launched with a defect.
NASA management is reviewing the “flight rationale” for Discovery’s next mission, considering the cracks in the external tank. Key quote:
Troubleshooters are assessing the structural integrity of the tank and its foam insulation to develop the necessary flight rationale, or justification, for proceeding with another launch as early as Nov. 30.
Sometimes going is hard: The engineering challenge of human waste management in space.
DARPA has completed its investigation on why a hypersonic test vehicle (HTV), launched on April 22, disappeared about 9 minutes into its flight. Key quote: “The HTV wobbled too much. Rather than risking an out-of-control flight, the bot self-destructed.”
The first asteroid sample return! Japanese scientists announced today that their probe Hayabusa did capture asteroid dust in its visit to the asteroid Itokawa.
Chinese female astronaut identified.
A fourth crack has been found on Discovery’s external tank. How this will affect Discovery’s November 30 launch remains unknown. There will a briefing on Monday to discuss the status of the schedule. This quote however gives me the willies:
External tank crack repairs are not unusual. Some 29 stringer cracks were found in 18 previous tanks, according to an official familiar with their history. Four have now been found in Discovery’s tank, ET-137, and three were found in a tank scheduled for use by the shuttle Atlantis next summer, ET-138. Doublers were used in 23 repairs.
There is a saying that we always fight the last war. After the Challenger accident NASA made great effort to prevent another o-ring failure in the solid rocket boosters, and ignored the foam falling from the external tank. After the Columbia accident, NASA then made great effort to prevent another piece of foam from hitting an orbiter.
Unfortunately, it appears that NASA may now be ignoring this crack problem. Even though they have been able to repair past cracks, for this many cracks to occur this often should cause alarm bells to ring throughout the agency, forcing a look at the problem in toto. Instead, it appears management has been making catch-as-catch-can repairs.
What makes this situation even more difficult is the factory that makes the external tanks has shut down. No new tanks are available. Thus, there are not many options for flying these last few shuttle missions except by using the already existing tanks, and repairing them as needed.
Like I said, this is beginning to give me the willies.
Except for the failure to install a video camers, two Russian astronauts successfully completed a six hour spacewalk on ISS today, doing a variety of construction tasks on the station’s exterior.
Videos from the Chinese lunar probe, Chang’e 2.
The first tests in Antarctica of a drill designed to drill cores on Mars.
This post by retired NASA engineer Wayne Hale explains why it probably is a good idea if Congress cuts the subsidies for new commercial space: The coming train wreck for commercial human spaceflight. This is the key quote, where Hale describes the regulations NASA is requiring these new companies to meet:
The document runs a mind-numbing 260 pages of densely spaced requirements. Most disappointing, on pages 7 to 11 is a table of 74 additional requirements documents which must be followed, in whole or in part. Taken all together, there are thousands of requirement statements referenced in this document. And for every one NASA will require a potential commercial space flight provider to document, prove, and verify with massive amounts of paperwork and/or electronic forms.
Is Spirit, the Mars rover, finally dead?
The cold war is back! Companies in the U.S. and Russia are in a race to build the first private space stations.
Why a yard sale to get rid of your junk is not always a good idea: An old vase, ignored by a surburban family for years, fetched them a record $83 million in an auction today.
Engineers have apparently found the cause of the leak in the hydrogen fuel line to Discovery’s external tank.
Orbital Sciences today successfully completed the first test of the first stage engine for its Taurus II rocket, the rocket the company plans to use in sending cargo to ISS.