The accumulating dents and dings on Curiosity’s wheels.
The accumulating dents and dings on Curiosity’s wheels.
Tag: spaceflight
Japan has announced an August 22 launch date for its new Epsilon rocket.
The competition heats up: Japan has announced an August 22 launch date for its new Epsilon rocket.
Key quote: “Epsilon replaces the M-V, a larger solid-fuel rocket that failed to attract sufficient customers to remain in production. M-V’s last launch was in 2002.” Competition rules!
The Russians announced that they plan nine more Proton rocket launches in 2013, for a total of twelve.
The competition heats up: The Russians announced today that they plan nine more Proton rocket launches in 2013, for a total of twelve.
I note this to give some context to what SpaceX will do with Falcon 9 this year. SpaceX has just updated its launch manifest schedule, and if the American company does what it says, it should have at least six more Falcon 9 flights this year, for a total of seven.
Should these predicted launches all take place, it will clearly demonstrate that SpaceX has grabbed a significant share of the launch market, but that the Russians are also holding their own.
Note also that the updated launch manifest still includes the first test flight of Falcon Heavy in 2013. Very interesting.
Update: The Russians are also preparing to launch their new Angara rocket family, which will replace their older rockets and allow them to launch from their new spaceport.
In a speech in Dubai last week Richard Branson revealed that his company is aiming for a 2013 Christmas day inaugural space tourism flight of SpaceShipTwo.
The competiton heats up: In a speech in Dubai last week Richard Branson revealed that his company is aiming for a 2013 Christmas day inaugural space tourism flight of SpaceShipTwo.
A new Defense Department report says that China is aggressively ramping up its space program.
The competition heats up: A new Defense Department report says that China is aggressively ramping up its space program.
China will continue to augment its orbiting assets, with the planned launch of 100 more satellites through 2015. These launches include imaging, remote sensing, navigation, communication and scientific satellites, as well as manned spacecraft.
China is pursuing a variety of air, sea, undersea, space, counterspace and information warfare systems, as well as operational concepts, moving toward an array of overlapping, multilayered offensive capabilities extending from China’s coast into the western Pacific. China’s 2008 Defense White Paper asserts that one of the priorities for the development of China’s armed forces is to “increase the country’s capabilities to maintain maritime, space and electromagnetic space security.”
Further, China continues to develop the Long March 5 rocket, which is intended to lift heavy payloads into space. LM-5 will more than double the size of the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) payloads China is capable of placing into orbit. To support these rockets, China began constructing the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in 2008. Located on Hainan Island, this launch facility is expected to be complete sometime this year 2013, with the initial LM-5 launch scheduled for 2014.
The Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle has been unwrapped at Dryden.
The Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle has been unwrapped at Dryden.
This is not the actual flight vehicle, but a prototype built to do drop tests with. They will build the spacecraft based on the data obtained in these tests.
A first look at the Saturn 5’s F1 engines that were recovered from the ocean floor.
A first look at the Saturn 5’s F1 engines that were recovered from the ocean floor and are being restored for museum display.
A Russian Bion-M spacecraft, filled with mice, lizards and other animals, returned to Earth after 30 days in space with about half its mice and all its gerbils dead.
A Russian Bion-M spacecraft, filled with mice, lizards and other animals, returned to Earth after 30 days in space with about half its mice and all its gerbils dead.
The Bion-M experiment, launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on April 19, carried 45 mice, 15 geckos, 18 Mongolian gerbils, 20 snails and a number of different plants, seeds and microorganisms, according to a Russian state news site. About half of the mice died, but the lizards reportedly survived. The Mongolian gerbils all expired, apparently due to an equipment failure, said Vladimir Sychev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, according to AFP.
It is unclear at this moment whether it was the harsh environment of weightlessness or equipment failure that caused the mortalities.
In new and apparently successfully ground tests of the SpaceShipTwo engine, Scaled Composites even destroyed one this week to test the operation of different components.
The competition heats up: In new and apparently successfully ground tests of the SpaceShipTwo engine, Scaled Composites even destroyed one this week to test the operation of different components.
Dark matter, WIMPS, and NASA’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
Dark matter, WIMPS, and NASA’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
This very nicely written article describing the scientific goals of AMS is even better in that it emphasizes strongly the uncertainties of the data and the theories behind it.
Great Britain’s first official astronaut has been picked for a five month mission on ISS in 2015.
Great Britain’s first official astronaut has been picked for a five month mission on ISS in 2015.
Astronaut Michael Foale was born in Britain, but he flew on Mir as an American. Britain meanwhile had banned spending any government money on space exploration in the 1960s, and hadn’t changed that policy until about two years ago. If the reaction to Canadian Chris Hatfield’s ISS mission is any guide, this mission will liven things up a bit for space exploration in the old country.
The Mars rover Opportunity has now traveled farther than any other American rover, including the Apollo 17 rover on the Moon.
The Mars rover Opportunity has now traveled farther than any other American rover, including the Apollo 17 rover on the Moon.
The team operating NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity received confirmation in a transmission from Mars today that the rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Thursday, bringing Opportunity’s total odometry since landing on Mars in January 2004 to 22.220 statute miles (35.760 kilometers). … The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth’s moon in 1973.
We have to once again remind ourselves that the roving part of Opportunity’s mission was originally only supposed to last 90 days, not 9 years.