Tag: spaceflight

Two low-cost, car battery-sized Canadian space telescopes were launched successfully in Russia today

10:14 am

Two low-cost, car battery-sized Canadian space telescopes were launched successfully in Russia today.

The important detail here is this quote:

“BRITE-Constellation will exploit and enhance recent Canadian advances in precise attitude control that have opened up for space science the domain of very low cost, miniature spacecraft, allowing a scientific return that otherwise would have had price tags 10 to 100 times higher,” [emphasis mine]

Most nanosats and cubesats have not had the kind of precise attitude control of larger satellites, which is one of their limitations. If the technology is now maturing so that these tiny satellites can be pointed as accurately as bigger payloads, it will mean that unmanned satellites are going to get smaller very quickly. This lowers cost and increases the customer base, creating more business for launch companies.

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Rosetta’s comet has unexpectedly gone to sleep.

10:04 am

Rosetta’s comet has unexpectedly gone to sleep.

An image snapped earlier this month by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft shows its target comet has quietened, demonstrating the unpredictable nature of these enigmatic objects. The picture was captured on 4 June by Rosetta’s scientific camera, and is the most recent full-resolution image from the narrow-angle sensor. It has been used to help fine-tune Rosetta’s navigation towards comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which was 430 000 km away at the time.

Strikingly, there is no longer any sign of the extended dust cloud that was seen developing around nucleus at the end of April and into May, as shown in our last image release. Indeed, monitoring of the comet has shown a significant drop in its brightness since then.

Rosetta’s approach for the next few months and arrival at the comet in August should be quite exciting.

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SpaceX today released a new video of the most recent Falcon 9R vertical take-off and landing test flight.

9:47 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX today released a new video of the most recent Falcon 9R vertical take-off and landing test flight.

Video below the fold. The flight was to test the deployment and use of fins for controlling the stage during its return to Earth. Watch them unfold and adjust themselves beginning at about 1:15 into the video. In the second half you can see them near the top of the stage.
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In an editorial today the Washington Times labels SLS “the rocket to nowhere” and condemns Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) for trying to sabotage the new commercial manned space companies in order to fund it.

8:59 am

In an editorial today the Washington Times labels SLS “the rocket to nowhere” and condemns Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) for trying to sabotage the new commercial manned space companies in order to fund it.

As I’ve said for the past two years, the high cost and slow development of SLS will increasingly make it a loser in its political battle with the new commercial companies. Eventually legislators will recognize its impractically and unaffordability — especially if the commercial companies continue to meet their milestones and achieve success, as they have been doing. When that happens, the influence of individual senators like Shelby to shovel pork to their particular states or districts will be outweighed by the overall political benefits for everyone in Congress to get American astronauts into space quickly and cheaply on an American-built spaceship.

This editorial by a major newspaper signals the continuation of this political process.

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SpaceX and ORBCOMM have now set Friday, June 20, as the date for next commercial launch of the Falcon 9.

8:49 am

SpaceX and ORBCOMM have now set Friday, June 20, as the date for next commercial launch of the Falcon 9.

The article is interesting in that it is somewhat critical of SpaceX’s overall failure so far to meet its launch manifest schedules. The point is well taken, but it seems to me that most of the delays were related to getting the upgraded Falcon 9 into operation. Now that this has happened, I expect SpaceX’s launch rate will continue to accelerate.

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On Monday ULA signed contracts with several American companies to begin development of an engine to replace the Russian built first stage engine used by the Atlas 5.

8:43 am

The competition heats up: On Monday ULA signed contracts with several American companies to begin development of an engine to replace the Russian built first stage engine used by the Atlas 5.

The commercial contracts between ULA and prospective U.S. engine builders cover technical feasibility analyses, high-fidelity planning, schedule, cost and technical risk assessments, and cost estimates, ULA said in a statement released Monday. … ULA did not identify which companies will undertake the engine studies. Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson, also declined to say how many companies signed the contracts with the launch provider. The contracts are for early-stage studies of a hydrocarbon-fueled engine optimized for first stage propulsion with “aggressive recurring cost targets,” according to ULA.

All the engine concepts will support a first launch by 2019, and ULA expects to select a future concept and engine supplier by the fourth quarter of this year, the company said. ULA will evaluate the feasibility of the new engine concepts for both private investment and the potential for government-industry investment.

For the American rocket industry this is good. The only negative I can see is the possibility that Congress will allocate a lot of cash and requirements for building the new engine, which will increase its cost, slow its development, and make it less competitive. If they instead do it like NASA has done with its commercial crew development and let companies compete to build it, they will get it sooner and cheaper, and the industry will develop more options.

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Getting the Russian Soyuz capsule prepped to take two tourists around the Moon.

8:59 am

More capitalism: Getting the Russian Soyuz capsule prepped to take two tourists around the Moon.

The key detail in this story is not so much that they are beginning to figure out the engineering upgrades necessary to fling a Soyuz capsule around the Moon but that Space Adventures has apparantly finally gotten two passengers who have put down deposits for the lunar flight. For years they have said they had one ticket holder, suspected to be James Cameron, but without a second passenger the flight could not go forward. It now appears that they have gotten a deposit from that second person.

Posted on the road in New Mexico.

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The competition heats up: European aerospace companies Airbus and Safran have signed an agreement to merge their rocket divisions.

8:24 am

The competition heats up: European aerospace companies Airbus and Safran have signed an agreement to merge their rocket divisions.

The companies said the joint-venture would combine Airbus Group’s launch systems with Safran’s propulsion systems, but hinted at broader integration of public and private activities in an effort to duplicate the success of planemaker Airbus. Europe’s Ariane 5 space launcher dominates the market for large commercial satellites but faces growing concerns over its future due to competition from Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), run by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.

To respond to the threat, Airbus and Safran aim to lead a drive towards an integrated European launch firm drawing on the lessons of Airbus’s planemaking unit, which was spurred into turning itself from being a consortium into a single company by the merger of transatlantic rivals Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in 1997. [emphasis mine]

The article, like practically every other report about Europe’s space effort in the past two years, singles out the competitive threat being made to their market share by SpaceX. Increasingly, the price reductions being offered by Musk’s company combined with its repeated success in launching payloads into orbit is forcing Europe to cut its own costs and become more efficent, something they have not bothered to do in decades. As result access to space is about to get signigicantly cheaper.

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After successfully completing its standard prelaunch static fire, SpaceX has delayed the Sunday Falcon 9 commercial launch at the request of its customer which wishes to do further tests of the six satellites on board.

5:42 pm

After successfully completing its standard prelaunch static fire, SpaceX has delayed the Sunday Falcon 9 commercial launch at the request of its customer which wishes to do further tests of the six satellites on board.

A new launch date is yet to be determined.

Posted from Durango, Colorado.

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Sierra Nevada has announced that it plans to do additional test flights in 2014 of its prototype Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle

4:51 pm

Sierra Nevada has announced that it plans to do additional test flights in 2014 of its prototype Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.

This is the same test vehicle that skidded off the runway during its first flight when one of its landing legs did not deploy. The company has never released any images of that smashup, but has said the craft was salvageable. I imagine this announcement is part of the continuing lobbying campaign by all the companies (SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada) competing in NASA’s commercial manned program. NASA is supposed to down select to two companies, maybe only one, by the end of the summer.

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The test of a new parachute system for Mars landing has been delayed until the end of June due to high winds.

4:47 pm

The test of a new parachute system for Mars landing has been delayed until the end of June due to high winds.

The space agency was forced to scrub six launch attempts over the past two weeks — the latest and last planned for this Saturday (June 14) — as a result of unusually poor wind conditions at the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range facility in Kauai, Hawaii. The balloon-launched Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) craft is intended to help NASA develop the means to land heavier spacecraft, and eventually humans, on Mars.

“All of the vehicle systems [and] our team were ready and prepared for all of the launch days; we were ready to go,” said Mark Adler, LDSD project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “The only thing that held us up was that none of the launch dates had or will have acceptable weather conditions.”

They have literally run out of their available time at the range, and must let others play through first while they renegotiate for a new slot of time later.

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For half a billion dollars Google has purchased satellite company Skybox Imaging.

10:25 am

The competition heats up: For half a billion dollars Google has purchased satellite company Skybox Imaging.

Google plans to use Skybox’s satellites to make better maps with “up-to-date imagery,” the company said in a statement. “Over time, we also hope that Skybox’s team and technology will be able to help improve Internet access and disaster relief—areas Google has long been interested in.” Skybox has only a single satellite in orbit right now but plans to fly a fleet of them to cover the entire globe at all times. Constantly updated satellite images would be of interest to everyone from agricultural companies and hedge funds to hardware stores. A demonstration earlier this year showed how Skybox satellites could be used to monitor oil reserves from space.

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The investigation into the failure of a Proton launch several weeks ago has been completed.

10:18 am

The investigation into the failure of a Proton launch several weeks ago has been completed.

The May 16 crash of the Proton space rocket was due to a failed bearing in the steering engine’s turbo pump, the chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Oleg Ostapenko, told ITAR-TASS. “The final version agrees with the preliminary findings made at the first stage of the inter-departmental probe. Telemetry and analytical information indicate that apparently a bearing in the turbo pump failed.

The information so far released is still a little vague in details. Whether the Russians will be more forthcoming is also not clear.

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Orbital Sciences has announced a further delay to July 1 for the next Antares/Cygnus cargo mission to ISS in order to complete its investigation into the failure of a Russian engine during testing.

8:57 am

Orbital Sciences has announced a further delay to July 1 for the next Antares/Cygnus cargo mission to ISS in order to complete its investigation into the failure of a Russian engine during testing.

The total delay is now about a month. The press release provides no information as to the status of the investigation, so why it is taking longer than originally expected is unexplained.

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Mojave Spaceport temporarily evacuated due to a small scrap metal fire.

8:58 am

Mojave Spaceport temporarily evacuated due to a small scrap metal fire.

The official statement can be read here. As noted by Doug Messier,

There’s a question of why scrap material (or any other flammable material) was anywhere near a tank full of nitrous oxide. In consulting with one expert who uses nitrous oxide, I was told that a blast could have possibly damaged everything within 1,000 feet. That’s basically two complete football fields with end zones plus another 93 yards. There are a lot of irreplaceable people and technologies within 1,000 feet of where that fire took place.

Then again, a fire can occur almost anywhere, and it is often impossible to keep it away from flammable materials.

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Richard Shelby’s poison pill in the Senate NASA budget bill that will double the cost of manned commercial space.

8:46 am

Senator Richard Shelby’s poison pill in the Senate NASA budget bill that will double the cost of manned commercial space.

Essentially Shelby wants to require the commercial companies to follow the older paperwork requirements used by NASA in the past. Presently, the contract arrangements NASA has used for these new companies have been efficient and relatively paperwork free, allowing them to build their cargo freighters (Dragon and Cygnus) and their manned spacecraft (Dragon V2, CST-100, and Dream Chaser) for relatively little.

The older contract rules are what NASA has used for Constellation and SLS as well as all past attempts to replace the shuttle. In every case, the costs were so high the replacement was never finished. In the case of SLS, the costs will be so high it will never accomplish anything.

Why has Shelby (R-Alabama) inserted this language? He wants pork, and SLS is the way to get it. Rather than cut the cost of SLS to make it more competitive (and which will reduce the pork in his state) Shelby instead wants to make the new commercial companies more costly, thus making SLS appear more competitive. It will still cost too much and will not accomplish anything, but this way he will be able to better argue for it in congressional negotiations.

Shelby illustrates clearly that the desire to waste the taxpayers’ money is not confined to the spendthrifts in the Democratic Party. Republicans can do it to!

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Want to own your own Apollo capsule from the 1960s?

8:34 am

Want to own your own Apollo capsule from the 1960s?

Apparently nobody wants to buy a spaceship, at least not for $200,000. St. Louis-based auction company Regency-Superior reported no bids on Wednesday for former Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren’s 1960s Apollo Command Module Block 1 mock-up, which was a fixture in the retired neurosurgeon’s eclectic collection since he acquired it in the mid-1970s.

The capsule remains available still at the minimum price if you go to the auction house’s website.

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