An update on Sierra Nevada’s effort to build its reusable shuttle Dream Chaser.
And from what I can tell, it is all engines firing, full speed ahead!
Deep Impact fired its engines today to adjust its orbit, giving it the option of visiting a near Earth asteroid in the future.
The press release is very vague about this future mission. I suspect there is a question of funding, which means that even if they can go to the asteroid, they might not have the funds to staff the mission.
The competition heats up: The Dragon capsule has been attached to the Falcon 9 rocket in preparation for Sunday’s launch.
Irony of ironies: In order to buy her seat on a Soyuz capsule Sarah Brightman outbid NASA, bumping its astronaut out.
This was a win-win for the Russians. They get paid more by Brightman than by NASA (over $51 million), and they finally get that year long mission they’ve been campaigning for for years. Because Brightman has taken one of NASA’s seats, the U.S. agency was forced to agree to the extended mission in order to maintain a presence on the station throughout that time period. Otherwise, their astronaut would come home and be replaced by Brightman, but for only ten days.
The head of Russia’s manned program said today that the first yearlong mission on ISS will begin in March 2015.
This appears to be another case of the Russians trying to use the media to pressure NASA into agreeing to the mission. I hope it works.
Felix Baumgartner has set October 8 as the day he will attempt his record-setting sky-dive from almost 23 miles high.
The weather in Gale Crater on Mars: warmer than expected.
The competition heats up: The first stage of Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket was rolled to the launchpad today for testing.
Europe’s ATV cargo freighter finally undocked successfully from ISS on Friday.
The competition heats up: The rollout to the launchpad of the first stage of Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket has been delayed until Saturday.
The rollout had been scheduled for today, but had to be scrubbed due to a battery problem in the transporter for moving the rocket. Once on the pad, they will then spend the next 4 to 6 weeks preparing for a hold down firing test. And if that test goes well, they will follow it up with the first launch of Antares before the end of the year.
The undocking of Europe’s ATV cargo freighter from ISS has been delayed again.
No explanation, which is worrisome. Then again, this might be nothing.
Isn’t competition wonderful? The head of Russia’s space agency said today that they need to reorganize their industry in order to compete.
Key quote: “Unless we act now – we will cease to be competitive,” he warned.
I wonder why? Could it be there is a company out there selling launch capability at half the cost?
Scientists are proposing that Europe send a probe to Titan and sail it on that planet’s methane lakes.
This concept had been proposed to NASA last year but it was rejected when the Obama administration shut down the planetary program.
The failed undocking of Europe’s ATV cargo craft from ISS earlier this week occurred because the astronauts used the wrong computer code.
They have rescheduled the undocking now for Friday.
The competition heats up: Singer Sarah Brightman appears slated to be the next tourist to fly to ISS.
A computer glitch prevented the undocking of the European ATV-3 cargo vehicle from ISS today.
Undocking of the European Space Agency’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV, from the aft port of the Zvezda module had been scheduled for 6:35 p.m. EDT (GMT-4). Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko attempted to send a command to begin the undocking sequence on time, but the command apparently never reached the docking mechanism.
I am not sure what will happen if they cannot pin down the problem. For example, it is unclear whether the cargo vehicle can be reprogrammed to be manually controlled. Also, it presently blocks a docking port. Is that port needed for the next ATV freighter as well as for other craft, such as Progress freighters? If so, this could become a serious problem.
The competition heats up: Scaled Composites last Thursday successfully completed a 45 second test burn of the engine for SpaceShipTwo.
Curiosity has zapped its first rock and moved on.
Boeing has indicated that it might shelve its CST-100 manned capsule, despite their recent almost half a billion dollar contract award from NASA.
This possibility illustrates why Boeing is losing market share, not only in space, but in the aviation industry. The article suggests that the NASA contract might not be enough to pay for CST-100, and that Boeing is unsure there is enough private market to make up the difference.
“That’s just for the ISS. That’s kind of the basement,” adds Elbon. More flights than those to the ISS are required he says, and Boeing is cautious about over-committing itself while future revenue streams are unclear.
I say bull hockey.
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So that was what caused the delay: An avionics unit in the Soyuz capsule to be used to fly three astronauts to ISS later this month had problems in testing which required its replacement.
The competition heats up: France and Germany in the European Space Agency are in serious disagreement about whether to replace the Ariane 5 or upgrade it.
The French space agency, CNES, quietly backed by Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium, has argued that the current Ariane 5 heavy-lift vehicle has only a fragile hold on its current 50 percent commercial market share. Just as important, according to the French reasoning, is that the entire Ariane 5 system, including its ground infrastructure, is expensive to operate and likely to remain so. Because money is short in Europe, it would be preferable to move immediately to a next-generation vehicle that would carry payloads ranging from 2,500 kilograms to 6,000 kilograms — with an extension to 8,000 kilograms — into geostationary transfer orbit, one at a time. This modular vehicle ultimately would replace not only today’s Ariane 5, but also the Russian Soyuz rocket that is now operating from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.
Set against this reasoning are industrial policy issues raised by the German space agency, DLR, and by Astrium, which is Ariane 5’s prime contractor. They say Europe needs to complete development of an upgraded Ariane 5 — at a cost of about 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion) — before embarking on a decade-long development of an Ariane 6 whose cost and industrial work-share distribution are unknown. [emphasis mine]
It is very clear that ESA has recognized that once Falcon 9 becomes completely operational, it will be difficult to get anyone to buy tickets on the very expensive Ariane 5. From the article it appears the battle centers on the fact that the French realize this, while the Germans are willing to look the other way.
The competition heats up: October 7 has now been set as the launch date for the first operational cargo flight of Dragon to ISS.
The rocket that will launch the next flight of the X-37B, and the first to return to space, has been assembled at Cape Canaveral.
The launch is scheduled for sometime in October, and will send the first X-37B into space for its second flight.
After postponing Juno’s second midcourse correction burn last month, engineers have now successfully completed that burn.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft successfully executed a second Deep Space Maneuver, called DSM-2 last Friday, Sept. 14. The 30 minute firing of its main engine refined the Jupiter-bound spacecraft’s trajectory, setting the stage for a gravity assist from a flyby of Earth on Oct 9, 2013. Juno will arrive at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
Astronaut Sunita Williams completed the first simulated triathlon in space this past weekend on ISS.
After “swimming” half a mile (0.8 km), biking 18 miles (29 km), and running 4 miles (6.4 km), Williams finished with a time of one hour, 48 minutes and 33 seconds, she reported. The space station has its own treadmill and stationary bike, which use harnesses and straps in place of gravity to keep astronauts from floating away. To simulate the swimming portion of the race, Williams used what’s called the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) to do weightlifting and resistance exercises that approximate swimming in microgravity.
Three astronauts have safely returned to Earth from ISS.
More important, the Russians have now delayed the next Soyuz manned launch to ISS for a week due to “some malfunctions [that] have appeared in one of the devices of the decent module.”
They also say the delay is to avoid a flight conflict with the next Dragon mission on October 15. This is interesting in that the last word we had from NASA was that the Dragon launch could occur as early as October 5.
For the past three days there has been a very lively debate by readers of Behind the Black, attempting to figure out the actual cost of launching payload to low Earth orbit by various rockets, including SpaceX, the space shuttle, and the NASA-built Space Launch System.
Three stories published today add some new information to this debate.
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The competition heats up: It appears that Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and Georgia are all competing to be the location of SpaceX’s proposed private commercial spaceport.
Germany announced yesterday that it has approved funding for the design of an in-orbit test of a robot satellite servicing mission.
The DEOS project will for the first time demonstrate technologies for the controlled in-orbit disposal of a defective satellite. In addition, DEOS will practice how to complete maintenance tasks – refueling in particular – that extend the service life of satellites. DEOS consists of two satellites, a ‘client’ and a ‘servicer’. The client acts as the satellite requiring maintenance or disposal. The servicer carries out the necessary work on the client. The two satellites will be launched together and brought into orbit at a height of 550 kilometers. According to current planning, DEOS will be ready for launch in 2018.
