This Space News analysis gives us the various possibilities for that unidentified Russian satellite that was first thought to be space junk, until it started doing intricate orbital manuevers.
As I have noted repeatedly, the satellite could be an anti-sat test, or it could be a technology demonstrator, or both.
The heat of competition: In describing the damage and repair plans for the Wallops Island launchpad, this article notes that a hot fire test of the reconfigured Antares rocket, with new first stage engines, is presently scheduled for the end of 2015.
No word yet on what those new engines will be, however.
For the next few days you can get the ebook “How to be a rocket scientist” for free, by an engineer who has been one. As Hoffstadt correctly notes,
We are still very far from having all of the answers and seeing all of the possible technologies that can help humans travel through the air and space, and to live beyond our planet Earth. There are important questions to ask, problems to solve, and things to build. We haven’t figured everything out yet and don’t know where the next ideas and accomplishments are going to come from. In other words … we need more rocket scientists! [emphasis in original]
The competition heats up: According to a report in a Chinese newspaper today, China is developing preliminary designs for a new rocket that would be the most powerful ever built.
According to an earlier report by China News Service, Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, disclosed that the Long March-9 is planned to have a maximum payload of 130 tons and its first launch will take place around 2028.
Liang urged the government to include the Long March-9’s development in its space agenda as soon as possible so that China’s rocket technologies will not lag behind those of other space powers.
Whether this rocket every gets built is highly doubtful. The article seems to mostly be both a public relations response to the U.S.’s test flight on Friday of Orion as well as an example of a government agency lobbying for a bigger budget. (This lobbying happens even in communist China.)
Nonetheless, we should not dismiss the possibility lightly. As competition causes the cost of building all rockets to drop, it will be more affordable to build bigger rockets. By the next decade building a heavy lift rocket might finally be affordable.
Engineers have been struggling to maintain contact with Venus Express, and have only been able to establish contact for intermittent periods.
Europe’s Venus Express was launched in November 2005 and got to the second planet from the Sun in April 2006, on what was originally a two-year mission. Since then it has sent data streaming back from its polar orbit.
But the probe’s days are numbered, and last month the flight control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) at Darmstadt, Germany, reported loss of contact with it. According to ESA’s Venus Express blog, it is possible that the remaining fuel on board the spacecraft was exhausted during recent manoeuvres and that the spacecraft is no longer in a stable attitude (the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna must be kept pointed toward Earth to ensure reliable radio contact).
They have been able to get bits of telemetry from the craft, but since its fuel supply is almost gone the possibility of keeping it operating much longer is limited.
After almost nine years of travel the American New Horizons probe has been successfully awakened in preparation for its July fly-by of Pluto.
Since launching on January 19, 2006, New Horizons has spent 1,873 days — about two-thirds of its flight time — in hibernation. Its 18 separate hibernation periods, from mid-2007 to late 2014, ranged from 36 days to 202 days in length. The team used hibernation to save wear and tear on spacecraft components and reduce the risk of system failures. “Technically, this was routine, since the wake-up was a procedure that we’d done many times before,” said Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at APL. “Symbolically, however, this is a big deal. It means the start of our pre-encounter operations.”
By mid-May we will begin to see images of Pluto and its moons that are better than any images ever before taken.
After more than two years of travel from Vesta, the space probe Dawn has now gotten close enough to Ceres to snap its first image.
The spacecraft will begin its approach phase on December 26 and will arrive in March.
NASA completes a successful first test flight of an Orion capsule.
The flight went off like clockwork this morning, and appears to have had no issues throughout the entire test flight.
One minor anomaly: NASA has not been able to recover the capsule’s forward bay cover, drogue chutes and pilot chutes as expected.
According to spaceport officials, it will take a year to repair the damage sustained by the launchpad at Wallops Island from the Antares launch failure last month.
The damage didn’t look that serious in the initial assessments. I wonder if this long repair schedule isn’t a negotiating ploy for funding.
Faced with stiff competition from SpaceX, Europe has handed the construction its next generation rocket, Ariane 6, from Arianespace to a joint venture between the European companies Airbus and Safran.
The new venture will be dubbed Airbus Safran Launchers, and will take over as Europe’s launch company.
I had known that Airbus and Safran had proposed this venture to build Ariane 6, but until I read this press release I hadn’t realized that the agreed-to deal to build Ariane 6 means that Arianespace has essentially been fired by Europe as the company running Europe’s rocket operations. Arianespace, a partnership of the European Space Agency’s many partners, was never able to make a profit, while its Ariane 5 rocket costs a fortune to launch. They have now given the job to two private companies who have promised to rein in the costs. We shall see what happens.
The heat of competition: Russia hopes to compete 11 Proton launches in 2015.
That sounds nice, but they haven’t yet officially rescheduled the scrubbed November 28 Proton launch of a commercial satellite because of a faulty gyro in the upper stage. Considering the problems they have had with Proton in the past three years it will be a major accomplishment if this schedule gets completed as planned.
The first test flight of an Orion capsule was scrubbed this morning due to high winds followed by a valve problem in the first stage of its Delta 4 Heavy rocket.
They have tentatively rescheduled the launch for tomorrow, though both the weather and the valve issue could cause a further delay.
