Tag: spaceflight

Rosetta team proposes landing on comet to finish mission

4:14 pm

Rather than simply turn off the spacecraft when its funding runs out at the end of 2015, Rosetta’s science team have proposed that the mission get a nine month extension, during which they will slowly spiral into the comet and gently land.

Their proposal is similar to what American scientists did with their NEAR spacecraft, which hadn’t been designed to land on an asteroid but was successfully eased onto the surface of Eros, where it operated for a very short time.

Leave a comment

Another major image release from Rosetta

9:34 am

Time for many cool images! The Rosetta science team has just released to the public another batch of images from its navigational camera.

The 1776 images cover the period between 23 September and 21 November 2014, corresponding to Rosetta’s close study of the comet down to distances of just 10 km from the comet centre – 8 km from the surface – and the images taken during and immediately following the landing of Philae on the comet.

You can browse through them at your leisure, making your own discoveries if you have a sharp eye and know something about planetary geology.

One comment

Russian rocket engines ready for shipment to U.S.

9:14 am

The competition heats up: An engine that Russia has developed for its Angara rocket has now been tested and is ready for shipment to the U.S. for use in the first stage of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket.

This new engine will replace the refurbished Soviet-era engines Antares had been using previously that had caused the October launch failure. Note also that since Antares is not a military rocket, it does not fall under the Congressional ban for Russian engines that limits their use on ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket. As the article notes,

On Jan. 16, 2015, RKK Energia, parent company of NPO Energomash, announced that it had reached an agreement with the American company Orbital Sciences Corporation, OSC, on the export of RD-181 engines for the first stage of the Antares rocket, thus replacing the NK-33 engines previously used on the launcher. The contract, worth around $1 billion, was actually signed and ratified by the Russian government in December 2014. According to the document, a total of 60 RD-181 engines would be delivered to OSC beginning in June 2015.

This deal means that Antares will likely be back in business soon, though it will still be dependent on Russian-built equipment, which carries its own risks. It also means that Orbital ATK will not be able to sell Antares to the U.S. military, limiting its marketability.

2 comments

It looks like the Moon!

9:03 am

craters on Ceres

Cool image time! Dawn has now swooped down to 3,200 miles, and provided a very nice image of the cratered surface of Ceres. Though it does appear to resemble the Moon, there are some differences that come to mind if you take a close look at the full resolution image. The surface appears smoother. All of the craters appear worn or eroded or less rugged. Also, there are no mountains. The terrain resembles the Moon’s lowlands or maria, but more so.

Note that the region in this picture is tantalizingly close to the double bright spot, but does not include it. Because Dawn is still easing its way into its first survey orbit of 2,700 miles elevation, it only takes pictures when it stops firing its ion engine, which it is doing almost all the time to get where it wants to be. Thus, they apparently only had time for this image.

The spacecraft enters its mapping orbit on June 3. Expect some cool images, including the first good images of the double bright spots, shortly thereafter.

One comment

Russian rocket now garden furniture in England

5:36 pm

A British businessman has purchased a discarded Russian rocket and installed it in his garden as decoration.

Almost 40ft long and weighing five tonne, the rocket was first flown in 1991 after being built by the Russians in collaboration with NASA at a cost $10 million. For ten years it held the record for the fastest ever made-made machine before it was jettisoned as archaic.

Somehow it ended up at a car auction at South Marston where it was spotted by Mr Sweet while checking out vintage motors. Mr Sweet, who runs the Cirencester-based computer company Zycko, said: “I saw it for sale at a car auction and decided to buy it, not really knowing what I was going to do with it.”

I am curious how the rocket had ended up being owned and offered for sale by a UK company that “specializes in car restorations.” I also wonder if this might be a major new profit center for the struggling Russian rocket industry.

One comment

X-37B orbit uncovered

5:27 pm

Space hobbyists have pinpointed the classified initial orbit of the recently launched X-37B.

Observers this week spotted the craft flying overhead in a 194 by 202 mile orbit (312 X 325 km), tilted 38 degrees relative to the equator. That perch is lower than previous X-37B missions and the inclination is lower, too.

“OTV 4 entered the lowest initial altitude of the program,” said Ted Molczan, a respected satellite observing hobbyist. “The ground track nearly repeats every 2 days. Frequently repeating ground tracks have been a common feature of the program. This could be an indication of a surveillance mission, or it may offer some operational advantage I have yet to figure out.”

Not much else has as yet been uncovered.

Leave a comment

New Images of Pluto from New Horizons

5:20 pm

Pluto in mid-May

Cool image time! New images taken by New Horizons of Pluto in mid-May have begun showing faint details of the planet’s surface.

“These new images show us that Pluto’s differing faces are each distinct; likely hinting at what may be very complex surface geology or variations in surface composition from place to place,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These images also continue to support the hypothesis that Pluto has a polar cap whose extent varies with longitude; we’ll be able to make a definitive determination of the polar bright region’s iciness when we get compositional spectroscopy of that region in July.”

These images also suggest vaguely that Pluto might not be entire spherical, but I wouldn’t put much money on that speculation. We will know for sure in just a few more weeks.

18 comments

Criminal charges against Russian workers who caused Proton failure

10:50 am

The three Russian technicians and their supervisor whose sloppy work caused the spectacular 2013 crash of a Proton rocket immediately after launch have now been indicted on criminal charges and will face trial.

According to investigators, Grishin, Nikolayev and Gudkova in 2011 were tasked with installing the angular rate sensors on the Proton rocket that are responsible for yaw control. “As a result of their violation of technical discipline envisaged by engineering and technological documentation, these sensors were installed incorrectly / at 180 degrees from their correct position/,” Markin said.

The installation error accounted for the vehicle’s wild trajectory, causing its crash and destruction. During the investigation, Grishin and Nikolayev partly admitted their guilt in committing the crime, he said.

In his turn, Nasibulin guided by the fact that over a long time no violations had been found during the installation process and also amid the job cuts withdrew the control operation from a respective list. He did not monitor the process and the sensors were installed without the due control.

Note that they didn’t sabotage anything intentionally. They only did bad work. In the U.S. such incompetence would certainly get them fired, but no one would dream of prosecuting them under these circumstances. It appears that Putin’s government has decided to make them scapegoats and an example to everyone else: Do your work right or else!

Along these lines, Russian government officials have also indicated they are considering imposing fines on manufacturers for any future failures or delays.

Both the criminal indictments and the fines would surely work to prevent further disasters. They will also work very effectively in preventing any risk-taking or innovation from anyone. Who wants to build something new and untested if there is a strong possibility its failure will get you in prison?

Do not expect much creativity from the Russian aerospace industry in the coming years.

3 comments

Solar sail experiment stymied by software crash

10:14 pm

The Planetary Society’s LightSail solar sail test mission, launched as a secondary payload on last week’s Atlas 5 X-37B launch, has fallen silent because of a software problem.

The communications problem occurred before the mission could achieve its main engineering goal of testing the deployment of the solar sail. They still hope to regain communications, but time is limited as the cubesat is in a low orbit that will decade relatively quickly.

One comment

The Russian investigation into Progress failure stalled?

8:47 am

Internal disagreements appear to be hampering the investigation into the Progress launch failure in late April.

The investigation had been leaning to pinning the failure on the disintegration of the Soyuz third stage oxygen tank. Others, however, are now claiming that the disintegration itself was caused by an improper separation of Progress from the rocket. The result is that the investigation has delayed the release of its findings.

Leave a comment

UAE establishes space agency

8:31 am

The competition heats up: The United Arab Emirates (UAE), in conjunction with its goal to send an unmanned probe to Mars, has announced the formation of its own NASA-like space agency.

Reading the long official press announcement at the link above will make you realize that a lot of this is public relations fluff being pushed by the UAE’s sheiks. Stripping that away, what I find left is mostly a program to educate students.

One comment

Corruption in the Russian space industry

8:52 am

A slew of stories in the Russian press today illustrate again the deeply ingrained problems that country has, both in corruption and in its ability to produce a quality product.

The last story describes the overall scale of the corruption, which is not confined just to the space sector, but can be found in many industries. The aerospace industry just happens to be the most visible outside Russia, and thus the most embarrassing. Yet,
» Read more

One comment

Japan to upgrade its ISS cargo freighter

9:15 am

The competition heats up: Japan has decided to upgrade its HTV cargo freighter to ISS by cutting its weight by 30% and reducing the cost to build it by half.

Without doubt the success of the U.S. in quickly building two private and relatively inexpensive freighters, Dragon and Cygnus, has influenced this decision. The managers in Japan have realized that the HTV is not efficient and could be streamlined, and they are trying now to do it.

Isn’t competition a wonderful thing?

One comment

Russian executive acknowledges SpaceX is beating them

9:03 am

The competition heats up: The chief executive of one of Russia’s largest aerospace centers admitted during a television appearance on Friday that their country is losing market share to SpaceX.

“The commercial launch market has changed over the past few years. New players have emerged, for example the American company SpaceX. Few people believed that a commercial project would be able to break into the market and create a competitive product, create a carrier [rocket] that’s competitive in terms of price and quality. But this has happened and we have to reckon with it,” he said. “It’s true that we have reduced our presence in the commercial launch market in recent years.

The irony here is that all of the decisions by Putin and the Russian government since SpaceX’s arrival — most especially the decision to consolidate the entire aerospace industry into a single corporation controlled by the government — have actually worked to limit Russia’s ability to compete.

Leave a comment

House passes revisions to space law

8:12 am

The competition heats up: The House yesterday passed a major revision to the 2004 space law in an effort to encourage commercial private development in space.

Most of the revisions were requested by the industry itself, and generally eased government interference. As usual, the opposition came from Democrats who wished to maintain as much power for government as possible.

The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President. The Obama administration has expressed “concerns” but has also not opposed the bill.

Leave a comment

Russians delay next Angara launch to replace Briz upper stage

11:24 am

The competition heats up? The Russians have delayed until late 2016 the first test flight of the heavy-lift version of their new Angara rocket so that they can fly it with its own new upper stage, rather than using the trouble-plagued Briz upper stage used on Proton.

In other words, they want to dump all the components of the Proton as soon as possible. Whether this will solve the quality control problems that seem to be systemic to their aerospace industry however remains questionable. If I was a commercial satellite company I would have as little faith in Angara, until it has proven itself through a number of launches.

Leave a comment

Rogozin pins Proton failure on “moral degeneration”

2:31 pm

In a speech before the State Duma, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin blamed the “moral degeneration” of the top leaders of their county’s aerospace industry for Saturday’s Proton launch failure.

“With such degeneration in the leadership of the enterprises, there’s no surprise at such a high degree of accidents,” said Rogozin who said that “space bosses have long gone into their own space.” … The vice premier expressed those that the force of “legal gravitation will lead them [those responsible for the failure of the Progress and the Proton] to where they should be,” RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.

In other words, expect more arrests and prosecutions. Meanwhile, there is little evidence that Rogozin or Putin are doing anything to make their space industry more competitive and thus capable of generating the profits necessary to keep it afloat.

2 comments

Update on Saturday’s Proton launch failure

10:15 am

Link here. The failure was in the third stage, which was the cause of a previous Proton failure last May.

Note that the Proton also put a commercial satellite in the wrong orbit in October when the upper stage underperformed.

Overall, the Russians are doing a very poor job in eliminating the serious quality control problems that have plagued their aerospace industry in recent years. If anything, the problems appear to be worsening.

Leave a comment
1 … 367 368 369 370 371 … 476