If all goes well, 2012 will be a busy year at ISS for both Dragon and Cygnus.
The article outlines the preliminary cargo schedule for both ferries next year, assuming their initial test flights succeed (a big assumption).
Russia has dropped its plans to build a replacement for its Soyuz rocket.
This is not the first time that the Russians have abandoned plans to come up with a new rocket, which suggests once again that — as successful as their space effort has been — they lack the ability to come up with new product. This in turn makes vulnerable the Russians’ market share in commercial space.
A shutdown of a satellite today cut communications in Canada for thousands.
Astronauts on ISS have been conducting regular eye exams in an effort to understand the eye problems caused by long term weightlessness.
More on making the X-37B an ISS supply and crew ferry.
Want to become an astronaut? NASA requires you to speak Russian.
A new Arianespace rocket starts its journey to French Guiana.
This first launch, the Vega qualification flight, is planned for January 2012 and will pave the way for five missions that aim to demonstrate the system’s flexibility. . . . Vega is compatible with payload masses ranging from 300 kg to 2500 kg, depending on the type and altitude of the orbit required by the customers. The benchmark is for 1500 kg into a 700 km-altitude polar orbit.
This rocket is comparable to SpaceX’s now discontinued Falcon 1, though it can put more payload into orbit.
NASA awards $1.35 million to the creators of an electric-powered plane after it flies 200 miles.
A Virgin Galactic customer gets a refund.
An update on the ongoing X-37B mission.
I like this quote from the article:
Meanwhile, Boeing has begun to look at derivatives of their X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle — including flying cargo and crew to the International Space Station. Speaking this week at the Space 2011 conference —organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and held in Long Beach, Calif. — Arthur Grantz of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems sketched out a host of future uses for the space plane design. For one, the X-37B, as is, can be flown to the space station and dock to the facility’s common berthing mechanism. No new technology is required for X-37B to supply cargo services to the ISS, Grantz said. Also, an X-37C winged vehicle has been scoped out, a craft that would ride atop an Atlas 5 in un-shrouded mode.
The Boeing roadmap, Grantz added, also envisions a larger derivative of the X-37B space plane, one that can carry up to seven astronauts, as well as tote into Earth orbit a mix of pressurized and unpressurized cargo.
Dawn begins close-up orbit observations of Vesta. More new results here.
In this orbit, the average distance from the spacecraft to the Vesta surface is 420 miles (680 kilometers), which is four times closer than the previous survey orbit.
After a summer break, the flight tests of SpaceShipTwo have resumed. Thursday’s test appeared to a bit more exciting that previous flights:
Test card called for releasing the Spaceship from WhiteKnightTwo and immediately entering a rapid descent. Upon release, the Spaceship experienced a downward pitch rate that caused a stall of the tails. The crew followed procedure, selecting the feather mode to revert to a benign condition. The crew then defeathered and had a nominal return to base. Great flying by the team and good demo of feather system.
