A private organization focused on preventing asteroids from impacting the Earth today announced its plans to build and launch an infrared space telescope by 2017.
SpaceShipTwo resumed flight tests yesterday.
China has spent $6 billion since 1992 on its manned space program.
The competition heats up: Boeing has successfully tested the maneuvering thruster it plans to use on its CST-100 crew/cargo capsule.
Using WhiteKnightTwo to launch cargo, including an update on revisions to SpaceShipTwo’s design.
More details on both SpaceX’s Merlin engine test yesterday as well as Orbital Sciences’ test firing of its Antares AJ-26 rocket engine on Monday.
SpaceX has successfully tested an upgraded version of its Merlin rocket engine. Video at the link.
The second phase of NASA’s robotic refueling demo on ISS has successfully proven that a robot can remove a satellite fuel cap not designed for refueling.
The fuel cap design is a duplicate of that used by several climate research satellites presently in orbit. These satellites were not designed to be refueled, but if they could be refueled, their usefulness in orbit could be doubled, even tripled. This test is intended to demonstrate that a robot could refuel them.
The last phase of this robotic demo will take place in August, when the robots will attempt to pump a simulated fuel into the demo satellite.
China’s astronauts successfully undocked, backed away from their space station, and then completed a manual docking early today.
China isn’t only going up: A three man crew took a Chinese submersible to a depth of 22,800 feet in the Mariana Trench earlier this week, the record for that nation.
NASA has delayed the first test flight of Orion’s launch abort system by two years to 2017.
NASA officials have been warning since last year that work on Orion would be slowed to keep pace with the development of SLS and its launch infrastructure. The agency has proposed trimming Orion’s $1.2 billion budget back to $1 billion for 2013. With the high-altitude abort test facing at least a budget-driven delay, the Langley team has proposed conducting one or more less-expensive tests in its place. Ortiz said conducting a hot-fire test in 2015 or 2016 would “keep the [launch abort system] project moving forward and help alleviate risk.”
I predict that Dragon will not only test its launch abort system first, it will have humans flying on it before Orion. And Dragon will do this for a fraction of the total cost that Orion and SLS spend per year. I also predict that when Dragon does this, Congress will finally begin noticing this disparity, and SLS will die unlaunched.
