Vostochny spaceport construction back on schedule
The competition heats up: In an interview today Russia’s deputy prime minister said that the construction of Vostochny is back on schedule and should be completed as planned in July.
Tag: spaceflight
Proton launches commercial satelite
The Proton rocket which had its launch delayed several weeks in order to repair a faulty gyroscope successfully placed a commercial satellite in orbit today.
Earlier this week there were also two successful Soyuz rockets. For Russia’s aerospace industry, 2014 has definitely ended the year on an up note.
A Russia/Brazil partnership for Sea Launch?
The competition heats up: Russia is negotiating a partnership with Brazil to operate Sea Launch.
The Sea Launch rocket is built by Ukraine, which presently has hostile relations with Russia, to say the least. The platform, built with Boeing money, is presently docked on the the U.S. west coast, which is also not what Russia wants. Moving it to Brazil and adapting it for use with a Brazilian rocket solves both problems, though the usability of Brazil’s rocket is at this moment quite questionable.
India’s Mangalyaan Mars probe working fine
After three months in orbit around Mars, India’s Mangalyaan spacecraft continues to function as designed, and is expected to operate beyond its planned six month mission.
In the last three months, Mangalyaan has captured nearly 300 pictures. On an average the spacecraft takes four pictures in three days. Besides capturing the images of dust storm activities, it has also taken images of comet Siding Spring.
Because of Mangalyaan’s orbit and the wide-angle nature of its camera the pictures are generally global. This output also is not spectacular compared to other probes. Nonetheless, this is an achievement for which India should be proud.
Loose fibers significantly cuts Gaia’s output
Europe’s Gaia telescope, designed to precisely measure the motions of a billion stars in the Milky Way, will have its accuracy cut in half because of the presence of loose fibers on the telescope’s sun shield that are allowing too much stray light in.
These fibres were spotted on Gaia before launch, but cutting them off was considered too risky, because that could allow small particles to enter the spacecraft. Another option, taping them down, was also ruled out because the increased stiffness could prevent the sunshield from unfolding.
The stray light shouldn’t affect measurements of the galaxy’s brightest stars, says Gaia science team member Anthony Brown at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, but it will double the expected errors on most of the stars in the Milky Way, which are much fainter.
For astronomers this is a great tragedy. Gaia will still teach us much, just not as much as they had hoped.
Angara A5 rocket launches successfully
The competition heats up: Russia successfully completed the first test launch of the heavy-lift version of its Angara rocket today.
More background here.
At this moment the dummy payload is in a preliminary orbit and requires additional engine burns by the Briz-M upper stage to reach its planned geosynchronous orbit. Briz-M however is well tested and has been in use for years already on the Proton rocket. Therefore, for Angara this flight has now been a complete success, even if the Briz-M stage fails.
Successful Falcon 9 static fire
After unspecified issues on a static fire test last week caused the postponement of the Falcon 9/Dragon launch until January 6, SpaceX followed up with a successful full static fire test of the rocket on Friday.
SpaceX fueled up a Falcon 9 rocket, ran through a mock countdown and fired the booster’s nine Merlin main engines Friday in a successful preflight static fire test officials hope will clear the way for liftoff Jan. 6 on a space station resupply mission. The exercise occurred at approximately 2:55 p.m. EST (1955 GMT) Friday while the Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon supply ship were kept grounded at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad.
Emailing a wrench to ISS
Having overheard an ISS astronaut mention the need for a particular type of wrench, the company that made the 3D printer on the station immediately worked up a design and emailed that to him, allowing him to print it up.
No word on whether the astronaut actually printed it, but it seems to me that he should do so immediately, then test its use.
Comet 67P/C-G: the Movie!
The Rosetta team has released a gif movie of Comet 67P/C-G, created by compiling images taken over a period of two weeks in late November.
The movie shows the nucleus’s rotation during that period, which helps viewers understand better its geography.
Kepler reborn
Kepler detects its first exoplanet after its mission was reshaped because of the failure of two of its four gyros.
The newfound planet, HIP 116454b, has a diameter of 20,000 miles, two and a half times the size of Earth. HARPS-N showed that it weighs almost 12 times as much as Earth. This makes HIP 116454b a super-Earth, a class of planets that doesn’t exist in our solar system. The average density suggests that this planet is either a water world (composed of about three-fourths water and one-fourth rock) or a mini-Neptune with an extended, gaseous atmosphere.
This close-in planet circles its star once every 9.1 days at a distance of 8.4 million miles. Its host star is a type K orange dwarf slightly smaller and cooler than our sun. The system is 180 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces.
Even more cool, the detection took place during Kepler’s first test run in its new configuration. This bodes well for the space telescope’s ability to make future discoveries.
Falcon 9/Dragon launch rescheduled
SpaceX has rescheduled the launch of Dragon from Friday to no earlier than January 6.
The link notes that though SpaceX doubled its launch rate from 3 in 2013 to 6 in 2014, this was still half of what the company had planned. I suspect however that the launch rate will grow once again in 2015, and SpaceX continues to ramp up its operations.
India’s rocket and manned capsule test flight a success
The competition heats up: India has successfully completed both a test launch of the first stage of its upgraded GSLV rocket as well as the suborbital deployment and splashdown of a test manned capsule.
More details are sure to follow, but at the moment it appears that everything went exactly as planned.