Want to find out which American company is winning the race to ferry astronauts to the ISS? Go here.
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences intends to use an upgraded Antares rocket as its contribution to Stratolaunch.
Part of the upgrades appear to be making sure Antares has an available replacement engine for the refurbished Soviet-era engines Antares is now using.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has signed a deal to have its new Raptor engine tested at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.
This is a good use of these government facilities, providing a service and also making money for the government.
Two American astronauts successfully completed a spacewalk Wednesday to repair the backup computer that operates ISS’s robot arms.
The spacewalk went so smoothly it was completed in half the scheduled time.
Surprise, surprise! Russia has noticed literally no change in cooperation with NASA since the U.S. government announced two weeks ago that all such cooperation, excluding ISS, was being cut off.
Russia’s Roscosmos space agency has yet received no official notifications from NASA on curtailing cooperation, and working contacts continue, Roscosmos chief Oleg Ostapenko said in an interview with Vedomosti newspaper Wednesday. “Roscosmos has received no official notifications on suspending cooperation, we continue working contacts with NASA and other space agencies,” Ostapenko told Vedomosti adding: “Recently I held talks with the NASA leadership and European colleagues.”
More info here.
I had said that so-called NASA cut-off was all show and aimed not at Russia but at Congressional budget negotiations over NASA’s commercial crew program. This story only proves it.
What Israel’s new surveillance satellite, Ofek 10, is doing.
Arianespace struggles to schedule its customers for launch.
The editorial describes the juggling act the company is often forced to perform organizing the duel payloads required by the Ariane 5, with the launch of some customers’ satellites delayed because of the late arrival of other customers. From this information it is clear that the competition coming from SpaceX is not limited only to price. Arianespace’s requirement on Ariane 5 that there be two satellites means that sometimes they have to do harm to one of their customers by delaying their launch, even if that customer delivered on time. I can imagine some of those customers quite willing to go elsewhere should this happen too often.
Having completed more than 3,000 orbits around Mercury, Messenger’s orbit is now being lowered to just under 125 miles from the surface.
The competition heats up: Data now suggests that SpaceX successfully achieved a controlled landing of its Falcon 9 first stage on Friday.
The stage itself has not yet been recovered due to heavy seas, but all evidence points to a soft splashdown in the ocean. While I expect them to continue to do this over the ocean, until they get good footage of the landing as well as recover the stage, the next real step is to land the thing over land. The link above also has video of the vertical take-off/landing of Falcon 9R on Friday, which proves they are beginning to prove this capability as well.
In related news, Dragon was successfully berthed to ISS today.
Posted from Boulder, Colorado.
Some additional details about SpaceX’s effort Friday to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth gently.
They have not yet released a full report, but it appears that the company has made progress. They were able to control the stage’s spinning as it descended, and it apparently was still functioning after it hit the water.
Orbital Sciences is considering three different bids to provide the company new engines for its Antares rocket.
The engine presently used is from a stock of refurbished Russian engines first built in the late 1960s for the Soviet Union’s N1 rocket, designed to send humans to the Moon.
Dragon has successfully reached orbit.
No word on the attempt to bring the first stage down to the water under controlled conditions. One announcement during launch said the video was good and that the stage’s first burn was successful.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully completed the first vertical flight of the Falcon 9R landing test rocket.
Reports have been confirmed that SpaceX’s Falcon 9-R development vehicle made its first free flight today at McGregor — taking off, hovering, moving sideways and landing.
Falcon 9R is the successor to Grasshopper, carrying more engines to more accurately simulate a Falcon 9 first stage.
Meanwhile, today’s launch of Dragon and the second attempt to bring the first stage back to Earth in a controlled manner remains iffy because of weather.
The competition heats up: Russia is accelerating construction of its new spaceport in Vostochny.
The schedule doesn’t appear to have been pushed up, with the first launch still set for 2015, but they are going to initiate a second shift, and will have monthly meeting with the government to monitor progress. Under the top-down Russian way of doing things, this is how they make sure their high priority projects get finished on time and successfully.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada is planning additional glide tests in the fall. using its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.
This is the same test vehicle that crashed last October during its first glide test when one landing gear failed to deploy properly. The glide test itself was a success however, as the vehicle did a controlled unmanned glide perfectly to the runway, and the failed landing gear was one that the spacecraft will not use once completed.
Note also that these announced flight tests will occur after NASA eliminates one of the companies competing for the final crew ferrying contract to ISS. This suggests that Sierra Nevada plans to continue development of Dream Chaser, regardless of whether they get the contract or not.
Crowd-funding the engineering and money to bring a 1970s NASA space probe back to life.
More here.
The idea is brilliant. The probe, ISEE-3, has functioning instruments. It just hasn’t been operated since the 1980s. If they can get the funds to pay for the effort, they will provide scientists a space probe for pennies.
NASA has officially handed control of launchpad 39A to SpaceX, where the company intends to launch its Falcon Heavy.
The agreement turns over control of Launch Complex 39A to the commercial space transportation firm, which plans to use the launch pad for the the initial flights of the Falcon Heavy, a mega-rocket featuring 27 first stage engines generating nearly 4 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
Pad 39A was the starting point for many historic Apollo and space shuttle missions, including the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 and the first and last shuttle launches in 1981 and 2011.
“We’ll make great use of this pad, I promise,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, in remarks to the media moments after signing the lease. “We’ve had architects and our launch site engineering [team] working for many months on the sidelines. We will launch the Falcon Heavy from here first — from this pad — early next year.” [emphasis mine]
The highlighted quote reveals a key fact. Until recently SpaceX had been claiming that it will do its first demo launch of Falcon Heavy in 2014. This quote confirms that this schedule is not happening.
China’s president calls for the increased military use of that country’s space assets.
The article itself is not very informative, other than noting these comments. In fact, it has some errors that suggest the writer knows very little about China’s space effort, both civilian or military.
Nonetheless, China’s president did make this statement, which tells us that it is definitely Chinese policy. Not good.
SpaceX has positioned recovery crews in the Atlantic in an effort to retrieve the Falcon 9 first stage after its upcoming launch, now set for Friday.
European satellite operators are pressing Arianespace to find ways to immediately reduce the cost of launching satellites on now Ariane 5 and in the future on Ariane 6.
And why are they doing this? To quote them:
“What is sure is that Europe deserves and requires a [reorganized launcher sector] ahead of 2019, the letter says. “[C]onsiderable efforts to restore competitiveness in price of the existing European launcher need to be undertaken if Europe is [to] maintain its market situation.
“In the short term, a more favorable pricing policy for the small satellites currently being targeted by SpaceX seems indispensable to keeping the Ariane launch manifest strong and well-populated.” [emphasis mine]
It seems that they take very seriously the competitive challenge being presented by SpaceX.
Today’s launch of Dragon to ISS has been scrubbed due to “a helium leak in Falcon 9’s first stage.”
SpaceX also says they will be ready to launch by April 18, their next launch window.
The backup computer that helps operate ISS’s robot arms is not responding to commands.
The timing could not be worse.. Though the number one computer is functioning fine, this unit is essential for controlling the robot arm that will berth Dragon to ISS this week.
Side note: The article above described this problem in its headlines as a “glitch.” I despise this word, as it is generally used by government bureaucrats to minimize the seriousness of a failure. The Soviet era bureaucrats in Russia loved it. I have noticed it popping up in American news reports relating to space more and more, and it is never a very accurate description of the situation. This computer failure is not a “glitch,” it is a serious failure of an essential piece of hardware.
Update: Because a spacewalk will be required to fix the backup computer, NASA has okayed the launch of Dragon. They need it to arrive first because it carries a new spacesuit and other parts needed to replace the suit that almost drowned an astronaut during a spacewalk last summer.
Note: I was in the back country of Arizona this past weekend, caving, which is why I am only now getting up to speed on this weekend’s news.
Some real news about SpaceShipTwo: Scaled Composites has posted the logs for several successful engine test results on its webpage.
The information is sparse, but it suggests that these tests are attempts to run the engine through a full simulated flight.
The competition heats up: Houston yesterday signed a letter of intent with Sierra Nevada to provide the company a home at that city’s proposed spaceport.
The competition here is not from the spaceship company but from the spaceport. Houston is in a race with Colorado and Florida for the launch business. In fact, it appears that a lot of American cities are scrambling to attract the new aerospace launch companies, suggesting that they all see a new industry aborning and want their share.
Another example: The California legislature has passed a ten year tax exemption for spaceflight companies.
An update on China’s lunar rover Yutu.
This is an excellent summary of the mission and its status, including detailed maps outlining the rover’s path before it finally lost the ability to move.
Two stories today from Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic:
The quote from the first story is especially entertaining:
» Read more
India’s Mangalyaan Mars orbiter is now halfway to Mars.
India, unlike Israel, wants to conquer the stars, so the success of their first interplanetary mission means a lot to them.
The competition heats up: XCOR today took delivery of the cockpit assembly of its Lynx suborbital space plane.
They have said they will begin flight tests later this summer, followed by tourist suborbital flights at some point thereafter.
