NASA successfully tested a new inflatable heat shield today in a suborbital flight at Wallops Island..
An evening pause: A comedy sketch by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, in honor of today’s anniversary of that moment in 1969.
“Wouldn’t it be great to make everyone think we’d landed on the moon?”
“Why don’t we just release the footage of the Mars landings?”
The competition heats up: Russia has announced it has begun construction on a manned lunar lander, set for its first unmanned test flight in 2015.
There have been many such announcements from Russia over the past decade with few ever coming true, since such announcements are generally nothing more than a public relations lobbying effort to get funding.
The most intriguing part of this article however was this quote:
Last week, head of the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Corp. Victor Khartov said Russia must “return to the Moon in 2015 in a Soviet style, to prove everyone and ourselves that we remember all the Soviet Union could do” at the Farnborough air show in Britain.
I would interpret this statement as a desire for Russia to compete more aggressively with the U.S. and others, as they did back in the days of the Soviet Union. It was also in that time period that the Lavochkin center was in its heyday, with lots of money and research work.
Russia is considering shortening the time it takes for its Progress and Soyuz capsules to reach ISS after launch, from 50 hours to 6.
The long travel time was designed to save fuel at launch — thus increasing payload — by allowing orbital mechanics to bring the capsule and station together. I wonder then why the Russians are considering this change. Have the figured out a way to save the fuel in other ways?
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has announced an updated schedule for testing and flying its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule to ISS.
This article gives a bit more background.
NASA successfully completed today a parachute drop test of its Orion capsule.
Two news items from NASA today:
What I find most interesting about these stories is the fees charged by the two companies. SpaceX will be paid $82 million for its one launch, while ULA will be paid $412 million for its three launches, or about $137 million per launch.
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Tantalizing hints: Has Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser been picked as one of two finalists in NASA’s competition to ferry crew and cargo to ISS?
Three astronauts successfully lifted off on a Soyuz rocket earlier today, headed to ISS.
Mars Odyssey went into safe mode on Wednesday for about 21 hours.
The orbiter has had increasing issues recently. Since it is used mostly as a communications satellite, this has impacts data downloads mostly from the rover Opportunity, and will a bigger problem once Curiosity arrives in August.
The competition heats up: ESA is revamping how it builds rockets in order to compete with SpaceX.
ESA officials have been spooked by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has demonstrated its technical prowess with the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo vehicle to the international space station. SpaceX officials say one of the keys to its success is that Falcon 9 is built in one factory owned by SpaceX.
Read the whole thing. The way ESA builds the Ariane rocket requires too many participants (what we in the U.S. call pork), raising its cost. ESA is now abandoning that approach to cut costs and thus compete with SpaceX.
Bad training of the ISS astronauts by the company supplying the experiments was the reason the student experiments were never turned on.
“Previous crews were given on the ground review and personal interaction prior to launch,” Manber said. “For this mission, the astronaut received hardware training solely via video while on the space station. Clearly, there was a miscommunication resulting from the video instruction.”
The new colonial movement: Poland today was accepted as a member of the European Space Agency.
Researchers have concluded that the dust on the Moon’s surface might pose serious health risks for lunar colonists.
The Virginia spaceport at Wallops Island is on schedule later this month to hand control of its launchpad over to Orbital Sciences so it can begin ground tests of its Antares rocket.
The irony of this press release story is that Orbital has actually been running things, as it took over prepping the launchpad last year when the spaceport was unable to handle it.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has successfully completed testing of the nose landing gear for its Dream Chaser manned reusable spacecraft.
The competition heats up: From Virgin Galactic come two announcements today:
The second is really the big news, especially as it appears they already have some customers.
LauncherOne will be a two-stage vehicle capable of carrying up to 500 pounds (225 kilograms) to orbit for prices below $10 million. The rocket will be launched from Virgin Galactic’s proven WhiteKnightTwo, the uniquely capable aircraft also designed to carry SpaceShipTwo aloft to begin her suborbital missions. Thanks to the extreme flexibility of air launch, Virgin Galactic’s customers will enjoy reduced infrastructure costs in addition to the wide range of possible launch locations tailored to individual mission requirements and weather conditions. Branson and other senior executives announced that work has already begun on the vehicle.
A student experiment — successfully flown up and down to ISS by Dragon — is apparently a failure because no one on ISS ever turned it on.
Per instructions from NanoRacks, the Houston company that works with NASA to integrate such deliveries, Warren packed his worms, or C. elegans, into a glass ampule, or tube, then packed that tube into a larger one containing a liquid “growth medium” for the worms. An astronaut aboard the space station was to crack the outer ampule in a way that would release the worms into the surrounding liquid. It never happened.
The article is very diplomatic about this, but it is very clear that either the astronauts on ISS screwed up, or NASA did by not giving them clear instructions.
Saturn from above: Cassini has shifted its orbit so that it can look down on Saturn and its rings.
Scientists can now use neutron detectors at the south pole to warn astronauts on ISS of incoming dangerous radiation.
Birds of a feather: A European Space Agency (ESA) working group has recommended the agency focus its next manned space project on redesigning its now abandoned ATV cargo ship as a service module for the U.S.’s Orion capsule.
Believe it or not, this is how ESA plans to pay for its use of ISS from 2017 to 2020, by abandoning the ATV (which supplies ISS) and building a service module for a capsule that might never launch and is not intended to go to ISS anyway.
But then, it isn’t surprising, coming from a government agency.
Opportunity’s view from Mars, a panorama taken during the rover’s recent winter stopover.
The competition heats up: ATK’s push to build its Liberty launch system.
Liberty was one of the suitors [for NASA’s commercial crew] funding, before losing out to the four aforementioned options during the selection process. However, ATK decided to press on with the development of the system under an unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA), with a clear intent of convincing NASA they deserve to be awarded funding for the path towards crewed launches.
Indeed, ATK have stated that they will continue with the development of Liberty regardless of NASA funding, as much as Agency support would provide an accelerated schedule towards bringing the vehicle into operation by 2015. [emphasis mine]
If you read the article, you will see that there are many reasons why I would rather NASA did not pick ATK. The system depends too much on the shuttle’s legacy at the Kennedy Space Center (the VAB, crawler, etc), which means it will probably require a large labor force to launch and thus be expensive. However, if ATK can make Liberty profitable without NASA, I am all for them.
For those that wish to listen to my appearance last night on The Space Show, the link to the podcast can be found here.
It appears that both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are considering hiring the Russia aerospace company Energia to build components for the CST-100 and Orion manned capsules.
What is going on here is that both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are looking for a subcontractor who can build these components for less money. Since labor costs in Russia are much lower than the U.S., both companies are considering Energia for this work.
This quote, however, encapsulates the cultural war that still goes on sometimes between Russia and the U.S.:
“[Russian] achievements in docking sites and [thermal protection equipment] production are quite competitive, but I am not sure that the Americans will accept our offer because they not only have the task of building a spaceship but also of gaining competence in this matter,” Dmitry Payson, director of the space and telecommunication technology department in Russia’s Skolkovo hi-tech hub, told Izvestia.
In interviewing many Russian and American space engineers over the years I have found an amazing amount of contempt from each for the work of the other, often without justification. Just as the Russians above seem to falsely think that Boeing and Lockheed Martin know nothing about docking equipment or thermal protection, American engineers repeatedly have expressed to me unjustified disdain for the space station technology developed by the Russians for Mir. The result: both countries often don’t take advantage of the other’s skills.
NASA today unveiled for the press the Orion capsule scheduled for the program’s first test flight in 2014.
Today’s unveiling was essentially a PR event designed to boost political support for the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion capsule program. And though we should definitely give kudos to Lockheed Martin for its progress on Orion, it is also important to note that the building of this capsule took 8 years and about $6.5 billion. And it won’t go into space for still another two years at best. Compare that to SpaceX’s Dragon, which took about four years from concept to launch, with a cost of about $1 billion.
It is this contrast that is worrying the political supporters of SLS and Orion. Consider for example this quote from the above article:
But the Orion schedule assumes steady funding by Congress, which is an open question given the current debate over federal budget deficits, taxes and a general push to reduce federal spending. “We have to be concerned about that because we are in an era of government spending where you have to do more with a limited amount,” Nelson said. “That, of course, is going to be one of the main things we’re going to have to look at in the future.” [emphasis mine]
Nelson has been a big backer of SLS from the moment Congress decided to force it down NASA’s throat. It is very clear from his comments above however that he recognizes the political difficulties that this very expensive program faces.
As I’ve said before, I expect SLS to die sometime in the next three years. Faced with a ungodly federal deficit, the next Congress is going to look for ways to save money and — assuming the commercial space companies like SpaceX continue to have success — Congress will see this program as one of those ways.
Tragedy: Retired astronaut Alan Poindexter has been killed in a jet ski accident.
Take a gander at these cool images from SpaceShipTwo’s most recent test flights.
Three astronauts have safely returned from ISS in a Soyuz capsule after 193 days in orbit.
