The competition heats up: Two Russian companies have announced a joint plan to build a suborbital spacecraft for tourism.
Sounds great, but Clark Lindsey has a very informative review of the history of these announcements from Russia, none of which has ever born fruit.
Surgery in weightlessness? Two doctors and an engineer are about to test equipment that might make it possible.
The idea actually has more significance for controlling bleeding during brain and spinal surgeries here on Earth.
Though this is a nice write-up describing Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser, the part where they talk about using the vehicle like the shuttle to repair other orbiting satellites is a bit of a stretch.
The competition heats up: On Friday SpaceX successfully completed a launch pad dress rehearsal for the next Falcon 9 launch to ISS.
An evening pause: As Dawn begins its journey away from Vesta, the science team has put together this stunning video tour of the giant asteroid.
Two astronauts on ISS completed an eight hour spacewalk today, extended because of problems with several stuck bolts.
Williams and Hoshide initially progressed well through their tasks, but the astronauts struggled with difficult bolts when removing a faulty power box from the exterior of the space station, and then again when replacing the defunct unit with a new spare.
More information here. In the end they were forced to leave the replacement unit only temporarily attached because the bolts would simply not screw in. It was thought there might be debris in the screw holes.
At 4:05 am last night the two Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), designed to study the Van Allen radiation belts, were successfully placed in orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket.
I am sure these two spacecraft will do good research and find out things about the Van Allen radiation belts that we will need to know when humans start traveling through them routinely. However, I must say that their name, the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, usually abbreviated as RBSP, is probably the worst name NASA has ever devised for a spacecraft: Impossible to remember, boring to hear, and completely forgettable. Other than that, it’s a public relations winner.
The journey begins: Curiosity heads east 52 feet on the first leg of its exploration of Gale Crater.
The possibility that NASA might finally agree with Russia’s repeated request to fly a year-long mission to ISS grew stronger this morning with two stories:
The first, by James Oberg, digs into the underworld of NASA politics to find that plans might very well be more advanced than NASA is letting on:
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Russian officials today announced that they will hold additional open cosmonaut recruitment drives, similar to the first held earlier this year, but with revisions.
It appears that the first drive was too short, only six weeks long, and did not get them as many applicants as they would have liked.
The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace has expanded its workforce as well doubled its factory space in response to the commercial contracts NASA recently awarded.
The company just opened a 185,000-square-foot addition, bringing its North Las Vegas plant up to about 350,000 square feet. It slashed its work force from 150 before the recession to 50 during the downturn; now, it’s looking to jump back up to 90 workers by Christmas. It’s hiring structural, mechanical and electrical engineers, as well as chemists, molecular biologists and workers who craft composite spacecraft parts.
Hat tip to Clark Lindsey at NewSpace Watch.
How not to go cave exploring:
An international crew of six astronauts will start training for a caving adventure designed to prepare them for spaceflight. CAVES, an abbreviation of Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills, prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively and solve problems as a multicultural team while exploring uncharted areas using space procedures.
Or to put it more bluntly, overly complicated, bureaucratically organized, and not very efficient. For example:
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