China has successfully launched an unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft to do an automatic rendezvous and docking test with its first space station, Tiangong 1.
Boeing has leased a now unused shuttle hanger from NASA for its CST-100 manned ferry.
Russians successfully put Progress freighter into orbit.
The Mars500 crew prepares to open the hatch after seventeen months of a simulated mission to Mars.
A Progress freighter has now undocked in preparation for the arrival of its replacement, scheduled for launch on Sunday.
Sunday’s launch will be the first test of the Soyuz rocket since the failure in August. A lot rides on this liftoff’s success.
A congressional report today revealed that two American climate satellites were attacked by hackers in the past four years.
In October 2007 and July 2008, a NASA-managed Landsat-7 satellite experienced 12 or more minutes of interference, and a Terra AM-1 satellite was disrupted for two minutes in June 2008 and again that October for nine minutes, according to Bloomberg Businessweek’s analysis of the annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The report says the hackers gained access to the satellites — both are used for Earth climate and terrain monitoring — through the Svalbard Satellite Station in Spitsbergen, Norway. It’s believed the attackers may have hijacked the Internet connection at the Norway ground station to interfere with the operation of the satellites.
Several Congressmen expressed doubts about and resistance to the new private space manned effort by companies like SpaceX during hearings today in the House.
Let’s be honest: it’s all about pork and only pork. Unfortunately, the new companies don’t deliver the same kind of pork to the right congressional districts, even if they might deliver a real product faster and for less money. To quote the article:
Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., rallied to the industry’s defense, citing a “hostility” to the private space industry. “Much to my dismay, I see some of the worst elements of decision making,” he said. “I see an anti-commercial-space attitude that could have very negative consequences.” Rohrabacher (who represents a district near SpaceX’s headquarters) seemed to chide Hall and Johnson, the two Texans who chair the panel, for parochial views. “Focusing on one’s own district and directing federal funds seems to be having a major impact on this decision,” he said.
As we anticipated yesterday, there were other regional pleas connected to the word of choice heard in the halls of Congress: jobs. Rep. Hansen Clarke, D-Mich., for instance, asked how the space contract could be used to create jobs in his district of metropolitan Detroit. The witnesses made the most diplomatic kowtows they could. “I’ve been pushing SpaceX to use more automotive suppliers,” Musk responded. Other space industry execs went on to claim Michigan subcontractors, to praise the auto industry, and to speak of spin-offs from space science programs.
Virgin Galactic has hired its first astronaut pilot.
[USAF test pilot Keith] Colmer, whose aviator call sign is “Coma,” joins an elite team in Mojave, CA, where Scaled Composite’s test pilots and [Virgin Galactic’s Chief Pilot David] Mackay have been putting WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo through an exhaustive series of test flights to fully explore and quantify the performance profiles of the two revolutionary vehicles.
NASA has ended its underwater mission early due to an approaching hurricane.
Russia’s first attempt in decades to send a probe beyond Earth orbit is now set for a November 9 launch.
Phobos/Grunt is a combined orbiter and lander, and is aimed not at Mars but at the Martian moon Phobos.
The Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral is going to be opened to tourists for the first time in years.
Back in around 1977 I was down in Florida for that year’s science fiction Worldcon convention. At one point we went out to the space center to take the tour. Since this was after Apollo but before the shuttle, the VAB was then part of the tour, and they took us inside at the ground level so we could look up into its vast height. Hopefully, the new tours will let the tourists see more.
