The launch of the first demo mission of Orbital Sciences’s Cygnus capsule to ISS has now been officially scheduled for September 17.
The Russians have now fired three executives as a result of their investigation into last month’s Proton launch disaster.
This is in conjunction with hiring an American to take over quality control.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada’s engineering test vehicle of its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle completed its first capture carry flight test yesterday.
The test, which saw the lifting body space vehicle lifted by a Sikorsky S-64 to around 12,400 ft above the dry lakebed, follows completion of tow tests earlier this month. … During the Aug 22 flight the Dream Chaser’s flight computer, guidance, navigation and control systems were tested along with its landing gear and nose skid, which were deployed during the sortie.
Curiosity snaps a spectacular image of Mt Sharp as it begins its journey to the mountain’s base.
The rover has already traveled more than a mile. The mountain however remains about five miles away.
On Tuesday NASA released what it calls a new “space exploration roadmap,” outlining the agency’s goals for the human exploration of space over the next few decades.
Normally I’d say, who cares? The space agency puts these kinds of PR roadmaps together periodically. None of them really ever mean that much. And in truth, this particular report doesn’t mean that much either. However, what makes this “Global Plan” interesting and worth mentioning is the participants who wrote it. It seems that NASA and the Obama administration didn’t do it alone.
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The competition heats up: Japan’s unveiled its new Epsilon rocket yesterday, scheduled for its first launch next week.
Epsilon is a low-cost, high-performance, solid-fuel rocket co-developed by JAXA and IHI AEROSPACE Co.,Ltd. and designed to launch scientific satellites. Epsilon features the world’s first innovative launch system called “Mobile Launch Control” which allows for built-in checks to be conducted autonomously within the rocket’s system. This allows staff to focus on high-level monitoring, making overall performance very smooth. A spokesman joked that it is so easy to control that staff could monitor the rocket on their laptops while at Starbucks.
In the past Japan has not been very good at building cheap and efficient rockets. We shall see how this one does.
The rover Opportunity has settled into its winter haven on Mars.
The rover’s handlers plan to get Opportunity up onto Solander Point’s north-facing slope before mid-December, NASA officials said. But the golf-cart-size robot won’t hibernate through the winter; rather, it will continue to move about, investigating several different Solander Point outcrops.
The Moon’s dirtiest secret: Does its dust levitate?
This is a serious mystery left over from the Apollo missions which has significant ramifications not only for future research (the dust would interfere badly with any astronomical observatories) but also for any colonies that are eventually established.
The launch today of India’s homemade Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) was scrubbed when a fuel leak was spotted at T-74 minutes.
India has had trouble getting this powerful rocket off the ground successfully, with four previous launch failures. If they succeed this time, however, they will then have the ability to build their own rocket, capable of putting commercial payloads into geosynchronous orbit.
Formation flying in space, without propellants.
Electromagnetic formation flight (EMFF) gets around this propellant problem by turning the satellites in a formation into electromagnets. By using a combination of magnets and reaction wheels, spacecraft in formation can move and change their attitude and even spin without propellant. Satellites can change their polarity to attract or repel one another, turn, or shift their relative positions in any manner that doesn’t require changing the center of gravity for the entire formation.
A prototype is going to be tested inside ISS in the near future.
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has confirmed a September 15 launch date for the first Cygnus capsule mission to ISS.
The Russians have begun a six-hour spacewalk today on ISS to prepare the station for the arrival of a new Russian module.
The article also outlines the continuing investigation into the American spacesuit problem from the last American spacewalk, where an astronaut’s suit began to fill with water from an unknown source. It appears they have pinpointed the most likely cause of the leak, but appear to be having problems recreating the failure.
Update: The Russian spacewalk is over, all tasks completed.
For the first time since 1975 the Navy and NASA have teamed up to practice the ocean recovery of a manned capsule.
This practice was with an Orion capsule mockup.
The engineering tests to try to save Kepler have found that the mission is essentially over.
A headline at this New York Times article, “NASA’s Kepler Mended, but May Never Fully Recover” is wrong, as the telescope has not been “mended.” They have found they might be able to do some limited science, at the most. NASA is going to review this possibility, weighing the cost versus the benefit, and decide in the fall.
Russia has concluded its investigation into last month’s Proton launch failure and now says its next launch will be on September 15.
While the investigation pinpointed the problem — the installation of sensors upside down — none of the news reports about this investigation have mentioned what any corrective actions the Russians are taking. Meanwhile, at least one unnamed Russian engineer is questioning the schedule and the thoroughness of the investigation.
Engineers have identified twelve asteroids that could be captured with today’s technology.
Their number one most easily moved space rock is named 2006 RH120. A single rocket burn in 2021 would be enough to place this roughly 4-meter-wide asteroid into orbit around a Lagrange point by 2026. NASA could then launch people to study this object (which would barely be bigger than the astronauts themselves) and learn about its history.
The competition heats up: Grasshopper flies again, this time both up and sideways.
Video below the fold.
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The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has completed ground tow tests of its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.
Video at the link. They will now begin flight drop tests this fall.
Today I have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “No liftoff for these space flights of fancy.” It is essentially a more detailed reworking of my rant on the John Batchelor Show on July 30.
My point is that the federal space program mandated by Congress, the Space Launch System (SLS), is never going to go anywhere, and is nothing but pork that should be cut as fast as possible. (See my essay from November 2011 on how NASA and the federal government can better use this money to get more accomplished in space, for less.)
The comments to the article have generally been positive and in agreement. Those who disagree mostly question the $14 billion cost per launch that I claim SLS will cost. That number comes from John Strickland’s very detailed analysis of what it will cost to build, complete, and operate SLS. However, it doesn’t require much thoughtful analysis to realize that this number is not unreasonable.
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The competition heats up: ATK has joined Stratolaunch, winning a contract to provide solid rocket motors for company’s proposed second stage air-launched rocket.
Stratolaunch’s first stage will take off from a runway, and will be the largest airplane ever built. The second stage, which Orbital Sciences is building and which ATK is now be a partner, will be released from this airplane and then ignite.
A detailed look at the questions and rumors that continue to swirl around the engineering status of SpaceShipTwo.
If you want to get an idea why Virgin Galactic has not done any powered flights of SpaceShipTwo so far this summer you must read this article.
Japan’s fourth unmanned cargo freighter to ISS was successfully berthed to the station today.
Virgin Galactic did another glide test of SpaceShipTwo today.
I wonder, however, why there have been no powered flight tests so far this summer. After their first powered flight in May, it was expected they would begin a series of such flights, leading up to the first passenger flights at the end of the year. Instead, nothing.
This lack of flights feeds the long standing rumors that there are problems with SpaceShipTwo’s engine.
An update on Dawn in its journey from the asteroids Vesta to Ceres. Bottom line:
Dawn is 18 million kilometers (11 million miles) from Vesta and 50 million kilometers (31 million miles) from Ceres. It is also 3.47 AU (519 million kilometers or 322 million miles) from Earth, or 1,310 times as far as the moon and 3.42 times as far as the sun today. Radio signals, traveling at the universal limit of the speed of light, take 58 minutes to make the round trip.
Russia has announced that they will resume Proton rocket launches in September.
Though they have pinpointed the specific cause of the most recent launch failure, they have not yet announced any remedial actions. Note also the expected number of launches for the rest of the year, 4 to 5, is down from earlier expectations.
Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, an official in that country’s space program has been arrested for taking bribes.
An update on the effort to bring Kepler back to life.
Japan today successfully launched its fourth unmanned cargo freighter to ISS.
The rendezvous and berthing is scheduled for August 9. Besides supplies, the HTV-4 carries more equipment for NASA’s robotic refueling demonstration project on ISS.
The competition cools down: Armadillo Aerospace closes down.
It is important to recognize that developing a new private industry is not easy, and that many more companies will fail than succeed. That reality, however, does not prove that freedom and private enterprise are bad ideas, merely that they carry great risks.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has confirmed that it plans to begin vertical take-off and landing tests of a full scale Falcon 9 first stage.
The tests would be in New Mexico’s spaceport, and are essentially a scaled up version of the Grasshopper tests the company has been doing in Texas. It appears they are going to do these ground-up tests in conjunction with attempts on each future Falcon 9 launch to land the first stage.
