An evening pause: We talk a lot about the International Space Station. Why not take a tour? In this January 2009 video, part 1 of 4, astronaut Mike Finke starts us out at the docking port used by the shuttle and takes us through the Harmony and Kibo modules. Along the way he gives a great view out the port side of the station.
You can see the remaining parts of Mike’s tour by clicking through, or you can wait until I post them over the next week.
Scaled Composites successfully completed the 34th test flight of WhiteKnightTwo today.
NASA said late yesterday that a third spacewalk will be needed to finish the replacement of the failed pump module in the station’s cooling system.
The first spacewalk to replace the failed pump module on ISS is finished, and it did not go as well as hoped. The astronauts had problems removing one of four cooling system ammonia lines to the old pump. They eventually succeeded, actually using a hammer to lightly tap the quick-disconnect latch free. They then had to seal an ammonia leak coming from the problematic line. These issues caused them to run out of time, preventing them from removing the old pump and installing the new one. It is expected they will pick up where they left off on the next spacewalk, presently scheduled for Wednesday.
Boeing has released more details describing its own manned commercial space capsule.
Boeing is cutting metal on own privately funded new space capsule, planned for completion in 2015. Key quote:
“We’re at a point in the development of human spaceflight where there’s a market emerging beyond the ISS, beyond NASA,” John Elbon, Boeing’s vice president for commercial space programs, said in a briefing Thursday. “And that piece of this is really exciting as well.”
At an aerospace industry conference last week SpaceX outlined the company’s plans for building its own heavy-lift rocket, as well as their long range exploration goals. Key quote from rocket development facility director Tom Markusic: “Mars is the ultimate goal of SpaceX.”
NASA managers have delayed the first spacewalk to replace the pump module from Friday until Saturday, 7 am (EST), with the second spacewalk now delayed from Monday to Wednesday. This is to give them more time to fine tune their plans.
The first spacewalk to replace the pump module on ISS and thus fix on of the station’s two cooling system is now scheduled for Friday at 6:55 (EDT).
More on that failure of the cooling system on ISS. It appears that NASA is gearing up to send two astronauts out for up to two spacewalks to try to fix the problem.
China successfully launches the fifth satellite in its own GPS system.
A failure in the cooling system on the International Space Station yesterday has forced the astronauts to shut down some of their systems while ground control troubleshoots the situation.
At an airshow on Thursday, July 29, in Oskosh, Wisconsin, Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, made some interesting remarks about the past and future of private space flight. Key quote:
Rutan said NASA should give 10 to 15 percent of its budget to new space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX without regulating how to spend the money. “That would allow them to not (have to) beg for commercial investment, while still working in an entrepreneurial mode.”
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit today said the following (in recognizing Jeff Foust’s op-ed for Technology Review):
CONGRESS BLOWS IT: Commercial Spaceflight, We Have A Problem. Congress will always choose short-term pork over long-term development unless there’s strong Presidential leadership. But while the Obama space policy is good, the White House hasn’t provided the kind of legislative push it takes to make it work. Without strong leadership, a good policy will always lose out to pork.
Didn’t someone say this already? In fact, didn’t that someone say this more than once?
During a spacewalk at ISS yesterday, two Russian cosmonauts successfully replaced a broken camera and installed new wiring for the recently added Russian Dawn module. They also lost a washer and an “attachment fixture” used to fasten the wiring in place, both of which were spotted floating away.
The General Accountability Office has ruled that the Obama administration’s decision to require contractors to reserve money for the possible termination of the contract, thereby forcing them to cut back early on the Constellation program, was legal.
James Fincannon of NASA took the two images of the Marius Hills lunar pit taken at different times by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (which I posted here) and did an overlay so that the shadow produced by pit’s rim could be easily compared with the rim itself (see below). He then did some calculations based on the sun’s angle of light shining into the cave and came up with the following calculations:
I estimate it is 60 meters from rim to bottom. The floor is flat below the surface. The rocks on the flat surface below ground are in stark relief (hard shadows) compared to above ground due to the sun coming only at one angle while above ground the albedo/reflections makes for soft shadows at this high sun angle (65 deg elevation). I cannot tell if the black portion of the combo image is a slope or more flat floor. Need a different high sun angle or azimuth to fill that in. Still I like the general pattern of the rim matching the shadow on the floor, although the image I found originally has that edge of the cave rim in shadow for a large extent.
A 60 meter drop is about 200 feet deep. This result is reasonably close to the depth estimated by Japanese scientists, 88 meters or 288 feet, based on images of the same lunar pit taken by their Kaguya probe.
Knowing the approximate depth of the entrance pit raises the much more important question: How will future lunar explorers to get to the bottom of this pit? It is ironic » Read more
Russian mission control has indicated that the debris left over from destruction of a Chinese satellite in 2007 poses a “danger” to the International Space Station. Key quote from a Russian official:
“If the calculations show that the debris is approaching the station at an unacceptably close range, the six astronauts will receive the order to take shelter in the two Russian Soyuz spacecraft which are docked with the ISS.”
This Orlando Sentinel analysis of the various Congressional NASA budget proposals working their way through the House and Senate right now concludes, as I have been saying for months, that the future for NASA is not good. Key quote:
The plan orders NASA to build a heavy-lift rocket and capsule capable of reaching the International Space Station by 2016. But it budgets less money for the new spacecraft — about $11 billion during three years, with $3 billion next year — than what the troubled Constellation program would have received. That — plus the short deadline — has set off alarms.
The space war continues. The House Committee of Science and Technology has amended its budget proposal to include an extra shuttle flight, making its proposal match the Senate’s proposal in at least this one way.
The Russians unveiled today a new proposed replacement for their Soyuz capsule, capable of carrying six astronauts into orbit. Interestingly, the design does not use parachutes to land, but solid rocket engines.
The British are coming! Today the recently formed UK Space Agency signed deals of cooperation with both the Russians and NASA.
In a blunt rejection of the Obama proposals for NASA, the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee today reworked the NASA plan — handed to them last week by the committee that authorizes NASA’s budget — so that it more closely matched the House version. These changes cut in half the money for private commercial space while adding $3 billion to continue the development of the Orion capsule and the heavy lift version of the Ares rocket.
Enjoyspace.com has a very detailed and nice write-up of Robert Bigelow’s plans to build the first private space hotels.
Russia is planning a new spaceport, in its far eastern Amur region near the border with China, to supplement the Baikonur spaceport located in Kazakhstan.
Space.com reports that the first drop flight of SpaceShipTwo, where it is released from WhiteKnightTwo to land on its own, could come as soon as this fall.
It appears the space war is heating up again. This analysis of the NASA authorization legislation issued by the House yesterday notes that it has serious differences with the Senate bill. The article notes that the House bill does not fund an additional shuttle mission while insisting that the government continue the construction of some variation of the Orion capsule and Ares rockets. See also this article from the Orlando Sentinel.
The House Committee on Science and Technology has released the text [pdf] of its NASA reauthorization bill. The committee’s short thumbnail description of the language suggests it is similar to the Senate language. A quick scan of the text also suggests this as well. I hope to take a closer look at both the Senate and House bills later this week and then give my take on both.
The head of the Russian manned space program thinks that NASA’s new goals of building a rocket and capsule for reaching an asteroid by 2015 to be “unreal.”
Boeing has released some new images and videos of its crew transportation vehicle, being built in partnership with Bigelow Aerospace using subsidies from NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.
