The competition heats up: Arianespace is considering accelerating upgrades to its Ariane 5 rocket so that it can carry larger satellites.
Engineers have decided to keep the New Horizons spacecraft on its original fly-by path past Pluto, scheduled for July 2015.
The New Horizons team recently completed an 18-month study of potential impact hazards – mostly dust created by objects hitting Pluto’s small satellites – the spacecraft would face as it speeds some 30,000 miles per hour (more than 48,000 kilometers per hour) past Pluto in July 2015. The team estimated that the probability of a mission-ending dust impact was less than 0.3 percent if the spacecraft followed the current baseline plan, far below some early, more conservative estimates. So, with the concurrence of an independent review panel and NASA, the project team expects to keep New Horizons on this baseline course, which includes a close approach of about 12,500 kilometers (nearly 7,800 miles) from the surface of Pluto.
The count of candidate exoplanets found by Kepler has now risen another 503 to 3,216, of which only 132 have been confirmed.
These new exoplanets were found before the telescope failed but the data for them is only now being released.
The delays in SpaceX’s commercial launch schedule appear caused by a series of problems testing the first stage’s upgraded engines.
The article also provides this updated scheduling information:
A successful test will be key for several of SpaceX’s future ambitions, not least their upcoming increase in launch frequency, with the next Falcon 9 – the debut of the v1.1 – set to loft Canada’s space weather satellite, CASSIOPE, out of Vandenberg Air Force Base. This mission has officially slipped to August, with the likelihood it will be re-targeted to September. Focus will then switch to Cape Canaveral, with two satellite missions, the first carrying SES-8, to be followed by the Thaicom 6 launch.
I had suspected the delays were related to the upgrades to Falcon 9. This article confirms this.
The draft budget of the House science committee gives commercial space a boost while nixing Obama’s asteroid mission.
Some hints about SpaceShipTwo’s next powered test flight, as well as details about the first.
China’s manned Shenzhou-10 capsule successfully completed an automated docking with its Tiengong-1 space station today.
They will spend 12 days on board the station, during which they will do, among other things, one manual docking test.
The Russian Progress freighter got a surprise today when it undocked from ISS: the rendezvous antenna that refused to deploy when needed after launch finally deployed.
Data from an experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has confirmed that light plastics can provide sufficient protection for humans against radiation.
This is very good news indeed. Combined with the data from Curiosity, which indicated that the radiation levels in interplanetary space were less intense that expected, it appears that radiation will not be a serious obstacle to interplanetary travel.
Now we just have to get the bone loss and vision problems solved.
Engineers have successfully restored the weather satellite GOES-13 to full operations after it was hit by a micrometeorite in May.
China has launched its fifth manned mission, planned to be longest to date.
“An article in the Economist today has some chilling conclusions about the difficulties faced by the new commercial space companies.
Although the cost of developing new space vehicles, products and services is high, just as much of a burden can be imposed by such intangible expenses as regulatory compliance, legal fees and insurance premiums.
The article points out the heavy cost to these new space companies caused by insurance requirements and government regulation, including the ITAR regulations that restrict technology transfers to foreign countries. However, this paragraph stood out to me as most significant:
Then there is the question of vehicle certification. The first private astronauts and space tourists may soon take to the skies in new launch vehicles, and the FAA has initially agreed to license commercial spacecraft without certifying, as it does for aircraft, that the vehicles are safe to carry humans. The idea is that specific safety criteria will become apparent only once the rockets are flying and (though it is rarely admitted) an accident eventually happens. This learning period will keep costs down for makers of the new spacecraft, even if significant compliance expenses are likely when it is over. The exemption was meant to have expired last year and was extended to the end of 2015. Commercial space companies are understandably keen for it to be extended again. “In the dawn of aviation, planes had 20 to 30 years before significant legislation applied,” says George Whitesides, the boss of Virgin Galactic.
Back in 2004 I noted in a UPI column the problems caused by these regulations, even as they were being written. (I had also done something at the time that few reporters ever do: I actually read the law that Congress was passing.) Then I said,
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China’s next manned mission is now scheduled for launch tomorrow, Tuesday, June 11.
The spacecraft will travel in the space for 15 days and go through two docking tests with the orbiting space lab module Tiangong-1, one automatic and the other manual.
Astronauts on ISS this week initiated a four year study of the vision problems that scientists have discovered occur to some individuals after long exposure to weightlessness.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has begun the testing program of Dream Chaser’s engines.
These tests were to verify that the engine test stand will function properly when they begin testing the engines themselves. Note also that Sierra Nevada provided the engines for SpaceShipTwo, and that Dream Chaser’s engines appear to be some variant of that hybrid engine design.
I’m so glad: The repairs to the cracks in the first Orion capsule have withstood static stress tests.
In addition to the various loads it sustained, the Orion crew module also was pressurized to simulate the effect of the vacuum in space. This simulation allowed engineers to confirm it would hold its pressurization in a vacuum and verify repairs made to superficial cracks in the vehicle’s rear bulkhead caused by previous pressure testing in November.
The November test revealed insufficient margin in an area of the bulkhead that was unable to withstand the stress of pressurization. Armed with data from that test, engineers were able to reinforce the design to ensure structural integrity and validate the fix during this week’s test. [emphasis mine]
I love how this NASA press release describes the cracking of the capsule bulkhead during the November testing, indicated in bold. “Insufficient margin”, eh?
Normally I am very forgiving when things fail during engineering tests, but for the bulkhead of this capsule to crack during these tests was actually pretty shameful, considering the decades of engineering work previously done in the building of space capsules and submarines. Things can certainly go wrong when you build something new, but I don’t see anything particularly revolutionary about Orion’s design. Lots of things might fail, but making sure the bulkhead could withstand the normal and well known stresses of spaceflight should not have been one of those things. The bulkhead failure suggests to me some sloppy engineering work took place in Orion’s initial design.
The scientists operating Curiosity have decided it is time to begin the trek up Mt. Sharp.
Europe successfully launched its heaviest unmanned cargo freighter to ISS today.
The docking of the ATV freighter, dubbed Albert Einstein, will take place after ten days of checkout in orbit.
German scientists have outlined a technique for using pulsars as an interplanetary and interstellar GPS system.
A look at Dream Chaser’s upcoming glide tests.
The competition heats up: The communications satellite launched by Russia’s Proton rocket has successfully reached its target orbit.
The competition heats up: Stratolaunch officially announced today that Orbital Sciences will build the system’s second stage rocket.
The rocket that Orbital will build for Stratolaunch will launch from the air, the first stage being a giant airplane which will carry that rocket aloft, much like Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo and Orbital’s Pegasus rocket. Clark Lindsey at the same website also notes that the efforts of SpaceX (and to my mind Stratolaunch) to make the first stage reusable will likely revolutionize the rocket industry.
The competition heats up: Russia’s Proton rocket today successfully launched another commercial communications satellite.
The troublesome Briz-M upper stage still has to get the satellite to its proper orbit, so stay tuned. Nonetheless, this launch, only a few weeks after their last commercial Proton launch, suggests they were serious about launching nine more commercial launches this year.
Meanwhile, we wait for SpaceX’s first commercial launch by the Falcon 9 rocket. Their launch manifest still claims there will be three such launches before the next Falcon 9/Dragon mission to ISS later this year, but two of those launches were supposed to have occurred already. The non-occurrence of the March MDA/Cassiope launch out of Vandenberg is especially puzzling, as there are few scheduling conflicts at that rarely used spaceport.
The Falcon 9 delays at this point are beginning to be worrisome, and suggest the skepticism of some about SpaceX’s ability to compete might have merit. SpaceX has got to launch a commercial satellite soon in order to quell those doubts.
Engineers now suspect that the shutdown of the GOES-13 weather satellite last week was caused by a micrometeorite hit.
They also think they will be able to get the satellite up and running again.
Data collected by a radiation sensor inside Curiosity during its journey to Mars suggest that it will be possible to build ships with sufficient shielding to protect humans on such a voyage.
Zeitlin and his colleagues analysed the radiation recorded by a small detector on board the craft that was active during most of the 253-day cruise to Mars. Although the craft was not uniformly protected from exposure to Galactic cosmic rays and charged particles from the Sun, the MSL’s shielding on average approximated that of human space-flight missions. ….
At NASA Langley, Thibeault and her colleagues are testing new types of shielding that consist of hydrogenated materials. Hydrogen offers protection because it breaks apart heavy charged particles without creating secondary particles that add to the radiation dose, she notes. One of the materials under investigation, hydrogen-filled boron nitride nanotubes, looks particularly promising because it is robust and lightweight enough to double as both the skin of a spacecraft and its shield. Using separate materials to build and shield a craft would add too much weight to a Mars-bound mission, Thibeault notes.
Thibeault says that she is heartened by the new study because she had feared that the radiation dose might be considerably higher. The results suggest “that this is a problem we can solve”, she adds.
The asteroid is coming! The asteroid is coming!
The fly-by of the large asteroid 1998 QE2 tomorrow at about 5 pm (Eastern) is causing a lot of hype. It is interesting, but hardly the big news event NASA and others want to make it. The scientists will like it because they get another close look at an asteroid. Others are using it to hype up the threat of asteroids, though that threat is not changed in any way by this fly-by.
Planetary Resources today announced a Kickstarter fund-raising campaign for its space telescope Arkyd.
Forgive me if I am less than enthusiastic about this. Supposedly Planetary Resources had big money backing from a lot of wealthy people, including some Silicon Valley Google billionaires. Why then do they need this campaign? It makes me suspect that the company is an emperor with no clothes.
The competition heats up: Japan has decided to develop its first new rocket in two decades and use the private-sector to reduce costs.
The article is very vague about how Japan will shift design and construction to the private sector. They need to do this, however, if they want to compete, as their space agency has been very inefficient at accomplishing anything cheaply or quickly.
The next crew of astronauts to ISS blasted off today on a Soyuz rocket.
They are taking the fast route to ISS, which means they will dock less than six hours after launch. Update: As noted by Trent in the comments, the docking went like clockwork.
The first X-37b to fly in space has now completed five months of its second mission.
