NASA has decided that Dream Chaser met all its engineering milestones during its test flight in October, despite the landing gear failure.
This means that Sierra Nevada will get its next payment under the commercial crew program.
The Cygnus cargo mission to ISS has been delayed by at least one day as NASA managers struggle to deal with the station’s coolant pump failure.
As noted in earlier reports, it appears they are considering a series of spacewalks to try to fix the problem.
Iran claims to have sent a second monkey into space and recovered it safely.
The story remains unconfirmed, with a number of significant questions, including this fact: “[T]he success of the first monkey flight was disputed when a different animal was shown in images released after the landing.
The same thing happened after the claimed first Iranian monkey mission in January, which also remains unconfirmed.
The competition heats up: After a successful soft landing, China’s lunar rover Yutu has successfully rolled onto the lunar surface.
The real significance of this mission is that China has now demonstrated that it has developed the engineering to achieve a controlled soft landing on another world. With this technology, they can move on to building a manned lander, something only the U.S. has been able to accomplish.
It appears that NASA is planning to go ahead with at least one spacewalk to replace ISS’s faulty coolant system pump.
After attempts from the inside to restart the malfunctioning cooling loop on the International Space Station failed last night, NASA mission managers have decided a spacewalk will be required to fix the problem, a source privy to NASA operations told TV20 News. NASA mission managers have scheduled the first spacewalk for Dec. 19th, according to the source, with two other spacewalks, also known as EVAs, likely to follow a few days after.
This story is not yet confirmed, but this AP article suggests it might be true.
Chinese scientists have concluded that the asteroid Toutatis is a rubble pile barely held together by gravity, based on data obtained from Chang’e 2’s flyby one year ago.
The coolant systems failure on ISS might delay next week’s Cygnus cargo mission.
[T]he reduced cooling capability means there’s less of a safety margin on the station. Todd said mission managers don’t want to risk having the Cygnus come in for a hookup under such conditions. “While we’re sitting at one loop, we’re somewhat vulnerable,” he said.
The logic here escapes me. It suggests they will stop all cargo missions to ISS until the coolant problem is solved. However, what if they can’t solve it without a spacewalk? To do that spacewalk they have to deliver an upgraded spacesuit to the station to replace the suit that had water leak problems in July, and that delivery is not scheduled until late February when the next Dragon cargo launch is scheduled.
Maybe they are considering putting that replacement suit on the Cygnus capsule so it can arrive quickly. If so, that would justify delaying the Cygnus launch for a few days.
More details about the situation here.
China’s Chang’e 3 lunar orbiter has lowered its orbit around the Moon.
This is in preparation for the planned landing of its rover on December 14.
If a US spacewalk on ISS is necessary to repair its cooling system, the spare parts are there, but the spacesuits are not.
Prior to retiring the shuttle NASA, aware that cargo supply would be limited once the shuttle was gone, shipped up to the station as many spare parts as possible. Thus, there are three spare pump modules on ISS that could be installed during a spacewalk to replace the module that has the valve problem.
However, because of the water leak problem that occurred in one American spacesuit during a July spacewalk, NASA has halted all American spacewalks until replacement suits can be shipped up to the station.
Since then, NASA has been conducting extensive investigations into the water leak issue, with… “the crew performed a series of tests on EMU 3011 [the faulty spacesuit] as part of an ongoing effort for returning the suit back to service. The tests included water leak checks, communication checks, and suit pressure leak checks. EMU 3011 passed all tests.”
However, NASA had been planning to wait to return another EMU, serial number 3015, to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon vehicle and deliver a new EMU in its place before clearing EVAs to resume. However the next Dragon vehicle is not scheduled to arrive at the ISS until at least late February next year.
The Russians might be able to do this spacewalk, but they are going to demand payment for the work. And they won’t come cheap, considering the circumstances.
One of ISS’s cooling system pumps failed today.
The failure has caused the crew to shut down certain systems, but at the moment no one is in any danger. They have also switched to a secondary cooling system as they consider their options, one of which might require a spacewalk to do repairs.
SpaceShipTwo flew another glide test today.
Not a powered flight however. See Doug Messier’s comments here about the slow pace of these powered tests, and how it raises questions about the company’s claim that it will be flying commercially next year.
The people speak: The refusal of 70% of California doctors to participate in Obamacare appears to be spontaneous, without leadership from any professional or political organization.
