Tag: spaceflight

Technical problems for cosmic ray detector on ISS

9:53 am

The failure of a second of four cooling pumps on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on ISS threatens the science instrument’s ability to continue its observations.

The AMS continues to gather science data using the three remaining pumps. They are part of a liquid carbon dioxide cooling system that is meant to dissipate heat as the AMS, which is on the outside of the space station, cycles in and out of sunlight during each 90-minute orbit of Earth Only one pump is needed at any given time. One failed in February 2014 and at least one of the other three is showing possible signs of trouble.

Since the 8.5-tonne AMS began operating in 2011, it has tracked more than 69 billion cosmic rays flying through its detectors. Its goal is to search for antimatter and dark matter. In 2013, AMS scientists reported measuring numbers and energies of positrons that hinted at, but did not confirm, the existence of dark matter.

The news article suggests that the instrument is now working with only one reliable pump. It also is possible that repairs might be done by astronauts on ISS during a spacewalk.

Some background: AMS cost $2 billion and about 20 years to build. It only got launched because Congress ordered NASA to launch one more shuttle mission to ISS to get it there.

Leave a comment

Atlas 5 successfully launches U.S. military satellite

9:45 am

The competition heats up: ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket today successfully launched a U.S. Navy military communications satellite into orbit.

ULA’s big selling point for its very high prices is its very high reliability. This was its 99th consecutive launch success for the company, going back to 2006. It was also the 127th in a row for the Atlas 5.

The problem is that a majority of these launches were government payloads, which up until now has been willing to pay top dollar. For ULA to really compete successfully, it needs private customers, and they appear unwilling to pay that top dollar, going instead to SpaceX. It is for this reason the company is pushing hard to develop a more efficient and less costly rocket.

7 comments

Manned Soyuz heads for ISS with new crew

9:38 am

A new crew was successfully launched into orbit last night by a Russian Soyuz rocket.

This is the mission that Sarah Brightman was originally going to fly on as a tourist — before she backed out or was rejected by the Russians as a unqualified. Instead, it carries one Russian who is going to take over as commander of the station for a long term mission, and two short term astronauts, from Kazakhstan and Denmark, who will remain in orbit for only about 10 days.

They are taking the long, two-day rendezvous route to ISS, so they won’t actually dock until Friday.

Leave a comment

Blue Origin wins financial incentives to build in Florida

9:31 am

The competition heats up: Local county officials in Florida have awarded Blue Origins $8 million in grants to encourage it to set up launch operations in Florida.

The money comes from property tax revenue from new commercial and industrial construction in North Brevard, under a process the Brevard County Commission created in 2011 to help spur economic development in North Brevard. Blue Origin plans to build rockets on the Space Coast, and launch them from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive officer of Amazon.com, would create 330 jobs with an average wage of $89,000, and plans to make a capital investment of $205 million to $220 million.

The company is being referred to as “Project Panther” in county documents, because Blue Origin has not officially disclosed its plans. Bezos is scheduled to be in Brevard County on Sept. 15 for a major announcement on the commercial space industry.

This news helps indicate what Bezos’s September 15 announcement will be about. They are likely to announce that the company is completed its arrangements for building its spaceport in Florida, and is now going to proceed. Up until now the company, which keeps its plans very close to its vest, has been vague about its future launch plans, especially after it lost its competition with SpaceX for leasing a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center.

One comment

Blue Origin abandons patent for barge-landing a rocket

9:24 am

The heat of competition: After losing a decision of the U.S. Patent office in a dispute with SpaceX, Blue Origin has withdrawn the patent it was awarded in March 2014 for vertical landing a rocket on an ocean-going barge.

In an order made public today, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted a motion to cancel the remaining 13 of 15 claims in the Blue Origin rocket-landing patent. Blue Origin itself had made the motion to cancel those claims, effectively acknowledging that its case was lost.

Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., has separately filed a “reissue” patent application covering the same general area. However, SpaceX has already attempted multiple rocket landings at sea and would likely be grandfathered in, allowing it to continue the practice, even if Blue Origin were to ultimately succeed in securing a valid patent.

The two companies are definitely in a heated competition. This is not the only legal dispute they have had, with SpaceX winning previously as well. Blue Origin had challenged the award of a 20-year lease to SpaceX of its launchpad at Kennedy. It lost.

In this case, it was absurd on its face for the patent office to award this patent to Blue Origin, especially since, at the time it did so, SpaceX was clearly already doing this exact thing.

Leave a comment

Curiosity spots a spoon on Mars!

9:04 am

The spoon on Mars

Very cool image time! In one of Curiosity’s recent images of the Martian surface on the slopes of Mount Sharp appears what looks like a long thin spoon jutting horizontally out of the ground.

The shadow below the feature is strong evidence that that this almost certainly a real object, shaped exactly as we see it. However, it is not an artificially created spoon. If you look at both the full raw image as well as zoom in on the feature itself, you will see that it is something that formed naturally due to Mars’ low gravity and the geology here. The spoon is a thin prong of harder material that has remained intact as the ground below it has been slowly eroded away by the ever-present but very weak Martian wind. If you look close you can see that harder material extend back into the rock behind the spoon.

Some of that erosion might also have been caused by flowing water sometime in the past, but to confirm this will take additional geological research.

4 comments

SpaceX delays its next launch

8:41 am

SpaceX has decided to delay its next launch for several additional months as it continues its investigation into the June Falcon 9 launch failure.

The next mission on SpaceX’s launch calendar had been a U.S. government ocean-monitoring satellite called Jason 3, but Shotwell indicated that a commercial communications satellite would move to the front of the line. Luxembourg-based SES SA has a contract to fly on the first Falcon 9 rocket that features an upgraded first-stage engine. The upgrade will allow SpaceX to attempt to land its rockets back at the launch site from high-altitude missions so they can be refurbished and reused.

They had originally hoped to return to flight in September. This is now probably delayed until November. However, that their next flight will include the upgraded Merlin engine and it will be a commercial flight means they will once again likely try for a vertical landing of that first stage. Moreover, SES has already said that if the landing is successful it wants to buy that first stage for a future launch. SES hopes to save money this way, while also encouraging innovation in the launch market which it sees as a long term gain for putting its payloads into orbit.

Leave a comment

Russia accelerating development of Soyuz replacement

8:52 am

The competition heats up: The head of Energia, the Russian company that builds the Soyuz capsule, said this week at a space conference near Moscow that they are going to accelerate construction of a prototype of a next generation replacement, capable of launch four astronauts.

We have agreed with the engineers…. to reduce the time for construction and production of the first copy of this spaceship. Despite the fact that we have voiced and agreed on the first launch in 2021, we have set the task to build the prototype by 2019, and I think that we will succeed, ” Solntsev told reporters at the MAKS.

Take this with a grain of salt. Energia has proposed a number of different Soyuz replacements since 2000, none of which ever saw the light of day. At the same time, the situation in Russia has changed, and the government is now committed to financing a robust space program. Previously, Energia had to find private investment capital, which never arrived because, I think, investors did not trust the legal situation in Russia. They had no way of guaranteeing that they would own their shares. In fact, the recent take-over and consolidation of Russia’s entire aerospace industry by the government has proven those investor doubts entirely right.

At the same time, the increased competition in the launch industry and this government takeover might signal something real is finally going to happen.

One comment

New Horizons team picks its next Kuiper Belt target

3:07 pm

The New Horizons science team has picked its next Kuiper Belt fly-by target beyond Pluto.

New Horizons will perform a series of four maneuvers in late October and early November to set its course toward 2014 MU69 – nicknamed “PT1” (for “Potential Target 1”) – which it expects to reach on January 1, 2019. Any delays from those dates would cost precious fuel and add mission risk. “2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen.”

The press release includes some silly gobbly-gook about how the science team can’t announce this as its official target because they still have to write up a proposal to submit to NASA, which then must ponder their decision and decree it valid. We all know this is ridiculous. Will NASA sit and ponder and make them miss their target? I doubt it.

The fly-by itself will be really exciting, because this object will truly be the most unusual we will have ever gotten a close look at, as it has spent its entire existence far out in the dim reaches of the solar system.

7 comments

Comet 67P/C-G goes boom!

7:48 am

Outburst on Comet 67P/C-G

Cool image time! On August 22, just days after its closest approach to the sun, Rosetta caught the outburst, image above, from the larger lobe on Comet 67P/C-G.

The image scale is 28.6 m/pixel and the image measures 29.3 km across. Although the activity is extraordinarily bright even in the original (below), the image above has been lightly enhanced to give a better view of the outline of the nucleus in the lower part of the image, as well as to show the full extent of the activity.

The most interesting images, I think, will actually come later, when the activity dies down and they can bring Rosetta in closer again. We will then be able to compare the nucleus both before and after this outburst, getting a sense of how the comet changes with each close pass to the sun.

Leave a comment

Launch of India’s big rocket a success

8:54 am

The competition heats up: India has successfully launched a military communications satellite using its home-built Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Because of India’s bad habit of not giving distinct names to its space vehicles or spacecraft, I have discovered a bit a confusion about the version of GSLV that just launched. This rocket was built entirely in India, but it is the Mark II, not the Mark III, which is a significant upgrade and has so far only had one test flight.

Nonetheless, today’s Mark II launch is the second success in a row for the India-built version. Considering the number of failures of this version in the past, this success is a significant milestone for India’s space effort.

Leave a comment

India starts countdown for the launch of its big rocket

8:57 am

The competition heats up: India has begun the countdown for the third launch of its entirely homebuilt Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket.

The launch is set for Thursday, and is attempting for the first time to place an actual payload into orbit, an Indian military communications satellite. Previous launches either failed with earlier versions of the rocket, or were carrying dummy payloads.

Leave a comment

Russia delays first manned Vostochny launch seven years

8:41 am

The heat of competition: Russia has finally admitted that it will not be able to fly manned missions from its new Vostochny spaceport in 2018, and had instead rescheduled that first flight for sometime in 2025.

The reasons were not spelled out, and it was unclear if financial considerations were behind the delay.

Space agency spokesman Mikhail Fadeyev made clear the change of plan in stating: ‘The first manned flight from the Vostochny Cosmodrome is scheduled for 2025 with an Angara-AV5 rocket, according to the federal space programme.’ The move reflected the ‘founding principle of Vostochny as an innovative cosmodrome’, he claimed. Under the plan, the first test flight of the Angara-A5B is scheduled for 2023, while the rocket’s first unmanned flight is slated for 2024.

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev recently visited the spaceport, stressing the importance of the first unmanned launch, due in four months from now, being a success. His statement appeared to allow for the possibility of slippage in this timetable also.

Vostochny was first proposed in 2007, so that means it will take Russia almost two decades to get this spaceport ready for manned flights. Only a government operation, designed to create jobs instead of accomplishing something, takes such an ungodly long time to get finished.

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to use Baikonur for manned flight for at least one more decade.

One comment

Cubesats to the Moon!

5:05 pm

NASA has chosen three cubesat missions to fly lunar planetary orbiters to the Moon, to be launched on the first SLS flight in 2018.

LunaH-Map, along with a number of other deep-space CubeSats, is a candidate to fly to lunar orbit on Exploration Mission-1, the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which will be the most powerful rocket ever built and will enable astronauts in the Orion spacecraft to travel deeper into the solar system. NASA will provide several CubeSat missions spots on the maiden SLS mission. LunaH-Map is a 6U (“6 unit”) CubeSat. One “unit” is a cube measuring 4.7 inches on a side; LunaH-Map strings six of these CubeSat building blocks together and weighs as much as a small child (about 30 pounds). …

“NASA has funded three different CubeSats to learn more: Lunar IceCube, Lunar FLASHLIGHT and LunaH-Map. They all look for water in different ways and provide different types of information,” [said principal investigator Craig Hardgrove].

The article is focused on LunaH-Map, not on the other two cubesats, but the fact that NASA plans to use “the most powerful rocket ever built” to launch the first three planetary cubesats, so small they could almost be launched by a model rocket, illustrates some of the problems of the SLS program. Even though that first SLS flight is likely to happen, I suspect that, should it falter for any reason (something that would not surprise me), these cubesats could easily be launched on another rocket, and will be.

Putting SLS aside, however, the building of these first planetary cubesats is a very significant development. It once again signals the way unmanned satellite engineering is evolving, finding ways to build spacecraft smaller and less costly.

Leave a comment

New sharp images of Ceres from Dawn

9:13 am

The Lonely Mountain on Ceres/>

Cool image time! The Dawn science team has released new images of Ceres, including one of a single mountain they have dubbed the Lonely Mountain.

The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. Its perimeter is sharply defined, with almost no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope with bright streaks. The image was taken on August 19, 2015. The resolution of the image is 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel.

I have cropped the image and posted it on the right. Be sure to look at the full resolution version. Not only does the mountain have no debris at its base, it truly is lonely. There are no similar features anywhere near it. It almost looks like someone took a shovel of material out of the ground to create the crater immediately to the south and then dumped that material to create the mountain.

Note that the mountain is more like a mesa, with a flat top, which suggests it is the remains of a higher elevation surface that eroded away in the distant past. The geological processes that could have done this however remain quite puzzling at this point.

10 comments

An update on XCOR’s Lynx suborbital craft

8:08 am

The competition heats up: According to one XCOR official, its first Lynx suborbital spacecraft is 6 to 9 months from launch.

Peck estimated that XCOR is six to nine months away from the Lynx 1’s first flight. The main structure is complete and the wing mounts are being made. Once the craft is put together, the team in Mojave will do ground testing at the Mojave Air & Space Port. Peck cited the longer runway at Mojave and the ability to do extensive testing there without shutting down a commercial airport as reasons for doing the test back in California. …

As the Lynx 1 approaches completion, the team is already starting to work on components for the Lynx 2, according to Peck. Peck described the Lynx 1 as a testing vehicle, while the Lynx 2 will be the vehicle that first transports paying customers into suborbital space. The Lynx 3 will be similar to the 2 except that it will have a dorsal pod to carry experiments and microsatellites. [emphasis mine]

I know many space activists have been repeatedly annoyed at me for my continued skepticism of XCOR, but the highlighted news above, that the Lynx craft under construction is only a test vehicle, illustrates why I am skeptical. Until now XCOR has never stated publicly that this Lynx craft was only for testing. Instead, their press releases and public comments have implied that after testing it would be used for paying passengers.

Then there is this: Their last press release update about Lynx’s construction is no longer available on the web. Nor are other press releases. In my experience, legitimate companies do not put their press releases into the memory hole, they keep them available because they help generate publicity. Companies that make them vanish, however, are usually hiding something, and are also generally the companies that in the end do not accomplish what those press releases promise.

Back in 2012 XCOR promised that Lynx would begin test flights that year. They did not. Delays like this are understandable, and are not a reason by itself to be skeptical. Repeated failures to deliver promises however are reasons to be skeptical. For example, they first announced Lynx to great fanfare in 2008, saying then that they hoped to be flying in two years. I did not believe it then, and I was right.

I truly want XCOR to succeed, but I also am not willing to be a PR hack for them. They need to do it for me to believe them.

10 comments

Cassini’s last close-up images of Dionne

2:44 pm

Dionne on August 17, 2015

Cool image time! NASA has released images from Cassini’s Monday close fly-by of Saturn’s moon Dionne.

The press release itself did not include any of the close-ups for some reasons. You have to dig for them at the site. Go here, here, here, and here to see a few of more interesting, the first of which is a global view taken just before the fly-by. The second is the highest resolution image, with a resolution 10 feet per pixel. The third shows the nighttime surface lit entirely by reflected light from Saturn. The fourth, shown on the right, was taken from an altitude of 470 miles with a resolution of 150 feet to the pixel. It shows the moon’s rolling, pock-marked, and cratered surface, to the horizon.

Leave a comment

Russians consider building reusable rocket

9:17 am

The competition heats up: Roscosmos is studying proposals for building a reusable first stage that will use wings to return to the launchpad for later reuse.

The project draft has been created as part of Russia’s 2016-2025 space program. According to Izestia, Russia could spend over 12 billion rubles (around $180 million) on the creation of the reusable first stage before 2025. The newspaper cites space experts as saying that satellite launches could become much cheaper with the use of renewable launchers as they would allow to save millions of dollars on engines installed on the first stage of the rocket. The cost of the engines used on the current expendable launch vehicles is $10-70 million.

I’m not sure how seriously we should take this. The Russians consider lots of proposals, many times leaking the proposals to the press for any number of reasons. Most of those proposals never come to fruition.

Nonetheless, SpaceX’s effort to make its Falcon 9 first stage reusable, thus making it far less expensive than anyone else’s, is clearly influencing the Russians, as it has ULA and the Europeans. They are feeling competitive pressure, and are thus compelled to respond.

Leave a comment

A detailed status update on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

8:37 am

Link here. The orbiter, which continues to send down spectacular images while acting as a workhorse communications relay for the rovers on the ground, appears to be in reasonable shape. It has enough fuel to operate into the late 2020s. The other known problems appear manageable.

Zurek said the most significant technical issue aboard MRO is in one of the spacecraft’s inertial measurement units used to determine the orbiter’s motion and orientation. Zurek said a laser inside one of the unit’s gyroscopes is showing signs of aging, and ground controllers are trying to coax the sensor along by switching to an identical backup unit.

In the meantime, engineers are working on changing the orbiter’s navigation logic to rely on star trackers in case both navigation sensors go down, Zurek said. One of the gimbals used to point MRO’s power-generating solar panels toward the sun is also sticky, a sign of age-related “arthritis” aboard the spacecraft, Zurek said.

MRO also abruptly switches to its backup “B side” computer on occasion, temporarily interrupting scientific observations for a few days each time. Zurek said the orbiter’s ground team has learned to deal with the problem, which has escaped diagnosis with a root cause.

Of course, there are always the unknown problems that haven’t yet popped up that could be devastating. Let us hope none appear soon, since NASA will not be able to send a replacement until 2022, at the earliest.

Leave a comment

Soyuz rocket builder proposes major upgrade

8:30 am

The competition heats up: The head of the Russian company that builds the Soyuz rocket said today that a new upgrade of that rocket could be built and flying by 2022.

Russia’s future Soyuz-5 carrier rocket will be equipped with advanced new engines using ecology-friendly fuel, according to Alexander Kirilin. “One of the distinguishing features of the Soyuz-5 is the use of liquefied natural gas as fuel,” Kirilin said in an interview with RIA Novosti published on Tuesday. “The engines will be developed from scratch, which would allow us to apply a variety of advanced technological and economic characteristics that would make Soyuz-5 competitive on global markets,” Kirilin said. “The design of Soyuz-5 allows the addition of extra side blocks to make it a heavy-class rocket, but we are focusing now on a prototype with operational payload of 9 metric tons,” he added.

At the same time, Kirillin stressed that the Soyuz-5 will not compete with the ongoing development of the Angara family of carrier rockets. [emphasis mine]

Kirillin is doing a political dance with this interview. On one hand he is trying to sell to the Putin government the idea of developing a new version of the Soyuz rocket — thereby giving his company work for decades hence — in order to increase Russia’s ability to compete in the international launch market. On the other hand, he has to convince that same government that this new Soyuz will not compete with Russia’s new Angara rocket.

The two ideas are contradictory, especially if the upgrade allows the Soyuz to be modular and scalable so it can launch larger payloads, like Angara.

Kirillin’s problem is that the only investment capital available to him comes from the government, which now controls the entire Russian aerospace industry. Under this Soviet-style monolithic set-up, he is not allowed to compete with other Russian companies. However, if he doesn’t convince the government to build something, his company will no longer have a reason for existing.

In other words, creating a single government organization to run all of Russia’s space industry, as Putin’s government has done, was very counter-productive in the long run. It discourages competition while naturally causing the industry to shrink.

Leave a comment

Orbital ATK cargo contract extended

4:56 pm

The competition heats up: NASA has ordered two more cargo flights from Orbital ATK.

Orbital ATK, Dulles, Virginia, will fly two more missions under its 2008 contract for a total of 10 flights, according to Orbital ATK spokeswoman Vicki Cox. The company designated the missions OA-9e and OA-10e, Cox said. She declined to say when those flights will occur, although the company has said it plans to launch any new CRS missions it gets from NASA on Antares once it completes two deliveries using United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket. The Atlas 5 launches are slated for December and early 2016 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

NASA may also order additional cargo flights from its other CRS contractor, SpaceX of Hawthorne, California. “A modification is in work with both [CRS] providers,” NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz wrote in an Aug. 13 email. “Additional missions for SpaceX are still under discussion.”

That this contract extension occurs about the same time NASA decided to delay its decision on the second round of cargo contracts is probably not a coincidence. It suggests to me that the agency is probably seriously considering awarding one of the next contracts to a more risky proposal, such as Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser. In that case, extending the present contracts gives them some additional margin should the new contractors have problems.

One comment

NASA postpones decision again for 2nd ISS cargo contracts

8:44 am

In the heat of competition: NASA has again delayed its decision on awarding its second round of contracts for providing cargo to ISS, delaying the decision from September until November 5.

The launch failures this year is the major reason NASA has held off making a decision. They need to see how both SpaceX and Orbital ATK react to the failures, as both have also bid for second round contracts.

Leave a comment

Astronomers photograph an exoplanet

2:14 pm

51 Eridani b

Cool image time! Astronomers have used the Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea to take the clearest image yet of a Jupiter-sized gas giant orbiting another star 96 light years away.

Once the astronomers zeroed in on the star, they blocked its light and spotted 51 Eri b orbiting a little farther away from its parent star than Saturn does from the sun. The light from the planet is very faint — more than one million times fainter than its star – but GPI can see it clearly. Observations revealed that it is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter. Other directly imaged planets are five times the mass of Jupiter or more. In addition to being the lowest-mass planet ever imaged, it’s also the coldest — about 800 degrees Fahrenheit — and features the strongest atmospheric methane signal on record. Previous Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, far different from the heavy methane atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system.

All of these characteristics, the researchers say, point to a planet that is very much what models suggest Jupiter was like in its infancy.

The exoplanet is the bright spot near the bottom of the image.

3 comments

Cassini’s last fly-by of Dionne on Monday

2:05 pm

Dionne

On Monday August 17 Cassini will make its last close fly-by of Saturn’s moon Dionne, dipping to within 295 miles of the surface.

During the flyby, Cassini’s cameras and spectrometers will get a high-resolution peek at Dione’s north pole at a resolution of only a few feet (or meters). In addition, Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer instrument will map areas on the icy moon that have unusual thermal anomalies — those regions are especially good at trapping heat. Meanwhile, the mission’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer continues its search for dust particles emitted from Dione.

The image of Dionne above is from a June 16, 2015 fly-by, The diagonal line at the top is Saturn’s rings.

After more than a decade, Cassini’s mission is in its final stages. When completed, we will have no way for decades to get close-up images of this gas giant, its spectacular rings, or its many very different moons.

Leave a comment

DARPA awards phase 2 space plane contracts

9:05 am

The competition heats up: The second phase contracts in the development of a reusable space plane have been awarded by DARPA.

DARPA has awarded $6.5 million each to three companies for developmental design work, including Boeing (in partnership with Blue Origin), Northrop Grumman (in partnership with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic), and Masten Space Science Systems (in partnership with XCOR Aerospace).

The requirements are that the plane fly 10 times in 10 days, reach Mach 10+, put a 3,000 to 5000 pound payload in orbit, and cost less than $5 million per flight. In this new phase, the companies are to deliver finalized designs by 2016, with prototype development to follow.

3 comments

NASA considers using Bigelow module for deep space missions

8:56 am

The competition heats up: Rather than build something in-house for gobs of money and decades of work, NASA is considering using Bigelow Aerospace’s largest inflatable modules for its deep space missions.

What has happened is that NASA has signed a joint agreement with Bigelow to study the possibility of using Bigelow’s B330 module as a transport habitat on long flights. The agency really has no choice, as it doesn’t have the funding to develop the necessary large spacecraft for these missions, and Bigelow can provide them to it for much less.

This description of the background of Bigelow’s inflatable modules illustrates why NASA can’t build these itself:

The B330 evolved from the Genesis I and II modules that Bigelow Aerospace had launched into space. Those technology demonstrators were born out of the NASA project known as TransHab. The TransHab was an inflatable module designed for the ISS but was ultimately cancelled in 1999 due to budget constraints. The module would have provided a 4 level 27.5 feet (8.4 meter) diameter habitat for the astronauts.

After TransHab was cancelled, Bigelow worked with NASA on a technology transfer, giving Bigelow Aerospace exclusive rights to the technology. Using this technology, Bigelow designed, built and launched two technology demonstrators. They are still on orbit today. Genesis I was launched in 2006 with it’s sister ship launching in 2007. Both ships tested flight operations processes and on-board electronics and have performed above design specifications. [emphasis mine]

Unlike NASA, as a private company Bigelow was able to build this technology quickly and at a low cost. With the new agreement, the goal will be study the operation of a B330 in independent flight in low Earth orbit. Whether an actual B330 will be build and launched however is not yet clear.

4 comments

The Space Show modernization crowd-funding campaign

12:52 pm

For more than a decade David Livingston has been producing and hosting The Space Show, the aerospace industry’s most important outlet for telling the public what is happening in space.

Now David is starting a crowd-funding campaign to finance a major update to The Space Show archives, in order to make them fully searchable and thus accessible to historians and researchers. As he notes,

Our archives as of this morning contain 2, 524 interview programs. These interviews tell the story of the space industry as many guests were there when it started, when we went to the Moon, and even before SpaceX was started. But as it stands, nobody can search our archives for information, program content, breaking news, etc. The closest one can come to a search is the GuestSearch tool on our current website, but searches are not interactive and about two-thirds of our programs have no key words so a search using the GuestSearch tool is not very useful Space Show archives are a treasure of information and history. By making them fully searchable and of archival quality, everyone benefits, even the casual Space Show listener.

As a space historian, I think David’s effort here is essential. The data hidden in the Space Show archives is invaluable, describing the beginning of the commercial space industry better than any other source. Making it searchable would make this history available to future generations that otherwise would never see it.

Check out the campaign as well as the Space Show support site and contribute. Not only can you help future space historians you will help keep the Space Show on the air.

One comment
1 … 368 369 370 371 372 … 483