Competition: Europe’s new Vega rocket successfully put nine satellites into orbit this morning on its first flight.
The fall of Rosat last October, which ended up in the Bay of Bengal, might have instead landed on Beijing had the spacecraft remained aloft a mere seven minutes longer.
NASA is in negotiations with ESA to have them provide the service module for Orion.
Orion is costing billions, yet NASA hasn’t the ability or budget to build its service module?
Virgin Galactic isn’t the only one building a suborbital spaceplane: Europe plans to test fly its own suborbital spaceship in 2014.
Germany’s space chief yesterday said he expected big battles in Europe over future funding for ISS and Ariane.
Ariane is a serious problem, as it is expensive and a money-loser, despite dominating the commercial market in recent years. And worse, it will be difficult to make Ariane competitive in the future:
ESA in 2010 hired an outside auditor to review the current Ariane 5 system to look for ways to save money. Its principal conclusion was that very few savings were possible without scrapping the forced geographic distribution of industrial contracts that preserves the political and financial support needed for the Ariane system.
The European Space Agency will make two more attempts to contact Phobos-Grunt.
Bad news: Europe has ceased its effort to contact Phobos-Grunt.
Phobos-Grunt has once again failed to respond to signals transmitted this week in an attempt to raise its orbit.
The ESA tracking station that had made contact with Phobos-Grunt earlier this week failed repeatedly yesterday to re-establish contact.
An update on the efforts to save Phobos-Grunt.
“The first pass was successful in that the spacecraft’s radio downlink was commanded to switch on and telemetry was received,” said Wolfgang Hell, ESA’s Service Manager for Phobos–Grunt. Telemetry typically includes information on the status and health of a spacecraft’s systems. “The signals received from Phobos–Grunt were much stronger than those initially received on 22 November, in part due to having better knowledge of the spacecraft’s orbital position.”
The second pass was short, and so was used only to uplink commands – no receipt of signal was expected. However, the following three passes in the early morning of 24 November proved to be more difficult: no signal was received from Phobos–Grunt.
An ESA tracking station has once again contacted Phobos-Grunt, this time downloading telemetry data.
“We have again established contact with the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, we obtained telemetry reports, they are being analyzed by our colleagues from the Lavochkin Research and Production Association,” ESA spokesman Rene Pischel said.
Mars Express takes a close look at one of Mars’ giant volcanoes, Tharsis Tholus.
At least two large sections have collapsed around its eastern and western flanks during its four-billion-year history and these catastrophes are now visible as scarps up to several kilometers high. The main feature of Tharsis Tholus is, however, the caldera in its center. It has an almost circular outline, about 32 x 34 km, and is ringed by faults that have allowed the caldera floor to subside by as much as 2.7 km.
An international team of astronauts recently completed a six day underground cave mission in an effort to simulate some of the aspects of space exploration on another world.
I, along with my cave exploration friends, find this article somewhat humorous, as these astronauts weren’t doing anything that unusual from our perspective. Routinely we have teams going underground for three to five days to do exploration and survey work as part of the Germany Valley Karst Survey in West Virginia. The result has been more than fifty miles of virgin passage in the past eight years.
But, if these astronauts want to join us and do some exploration, they’d be welcome!
First Soyuz rocket launch from South America scrubbed.
Lacking sufficient funds, Europe has invited Russia to join the US/ESA ExoMars program as full partner.
Video: How to build a Soyuz rocket.
Final preparations begin on the first Soyuz rocket launch from French Guiana, set for October 20.
Europe’s first Mars lander appears threatened by budget woes in both Europe and the United States.
The plethora of new exoplanet discoveries has astronomers longing for a telescope that can see them up close.
Astronomers need either a giant space telescope equipped with a device for blocking starlight, or an interferometer, consisting of several telescopes flying in formation. NASA did develop a proposal for such a space telescope, called Terrestrial Planet Finder, and the European Space Agency hoped to fly a similar mission called Darwin. But budgetary constraints have left both missions in limbo, unlikely to advance to the front of either agency’s queue until well into the next decade. At the conference, Traub raised the issue. “People are not thinking deeply about the distant future. People are wrapped up with what they’re doing right now,” he says. “Clearly, I’m concerned.”
Europe and Russia talk of joint manned mission to Mars.
I’m not sure how seriously to take this story, though its implications are intriguing regardless. More than any other country, Russia knows how to build the kind of spaceship necessary for the journey. What Europe will contribute more than anything else would be money.
Cost issues might force Europe to downsize its 2016 Mars mission.
Busy day for travel to and from ISS: The European unmanned ATV freighter Johannes Kepler burned up in the atmosphere even as a Russian Progress freighter was launched.
In related news, the U.S. and ESA are in negotiations to merge the European unmanned ATV freighter program with NASA’s manned Orion derivative. At the same time, Europe has announced its plans to test fly a reusable space plane.
The first Soyuz launch from French Guiana has now been scheduled for October 20, 2011.
Poland joins the European Space Agency.
European lifting body entry spacecraft is about to get its final approval before construction.
The United Kingdom’s Skylon spaceplane has passed a key European Space Agency review.
I’ve seen hundreds of these kinds of stories over the years. Skylon looks cool, and would be revolutionary if built. We shall see if it actually happens.
The first Soyuz launch from the European spaceport in French Guiana is now scheduled for October.
The Soyuz launchsite in French Guiana has been declared ready for its first flight.
