An expedition financed by Jeff Bezos, the founder of amazon.com, has found the rocket engines of the Apollo 11 Saturn 5 rocket at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Some history comes to Earth: The first Russian weather satellite, launched in 1969, is about to burn up in the atmosphere.
Not only that, but the U.S. research satellite Explorer 8, launched in 1960, is also about to come down.
Want a job designing and building spaceships? Scaled Composites is holding a jobs fair and open house at the Mohave Air and Space Port.
The story describes how Boeing is considering upgrading the X-37B to become a manned ferry to ISS, thus putting it in direct competition with the company’s other manned capsule, the CST-100.
At the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’s Space 2011 conference in November, Boeing’s Arthur Grantz revealed that the company is studying a new derivative of the Boeing/USAF X-37B. The new X-37C would be 65-80% larger than the current B version. Launched by an Atlas V rocket, X-37C could carry pressurized or unpressurized cargo or 5-6 astronauts. Grantz is chief engineer in charge of X-37 at the Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems Experimental Systems Group .
Hat tip to Clark Lindsey.
The effort of a private company to salvage a communications satellite stranded in the wrong orbit has been rejected by the company that owns it. Instead, the satellite will be de-orbted today, burning up over the Pacific.
Last night a piece of space junk missed ISS, but not by much.
The debris was only 8.7 miles from the station when it zipped by at about 16,000 miles per hour. That is very close, and had it hit, it would have done very significant damage.
The fragment was from an old Russian satellite, Cosmos 2251, that collided with an Iridium satellite in 2009, producing hundreds of fragments more than two inches across.
The six astronauts on ISS will take shelter in the two Soyuz capsules tonight because a piece of space junk will to pass close to the station at around 2:30 am (Eastern).
In discussions the last two days, managers for the space programs of Europe and China began laying the groundwork for a Chinese docking at ISS.
The United States, which paid for and built the bulk of ISS, has no way of getting its own astronauts to the station. The United States at present also has no way to bring cargo up to the station.
The result: We no longer own our own space station. Though the U.S. has strict laws on the books to prevent the transfer of technology to the Chinese, restricting communications by government officials with China, the Europeans do not. And since they can send cargo to ISS while we cannot, they feel free to negotiation with the Chinese for the use of our space station. Moreover, the Russians I am sure will heartily endorse these negotiations.
And what can the U.S. government do? Nothing.
Instead of focusing on a solution to this situation, the members of Congress tasked with supervising NASA want NASA to build a giant heavy-lift rocket (SLS) to use with the Orion capsule, neither of which is designed to go to ISS. Moreover, neither will be capable of flying humans into space until 2021, one year after ISS is presently scheduled to be shut down. Even then a single flight will cost billions, which makes this system useless for resupplying ISS.
And people wonder why I consider these elected officials stupid. And if they aren’t stupid, they surely are irresponsible and incompetent, at least when it comes to the American space program.
Europe successfully launched its third unmanned freighter to ISS early this morning.
The 13-ton cargo freighter is loaded with about 7.2 tons of supplies, including food, water, clothing, experiments and fuel for the space station, according to NASA. The unmanned ATV-3 is the heaviest load of cargo ever delivered to the station by a robotic spacecraft, ESA officials said in a statement.
In hearings Wednesday, several members of Congress suggested that NASA force the new competing commercial space companies to combine their efforts in order to save money.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden during a March 21 hearing on the agency’s 2013 budget the same question he asked of the White House’s chief science adviser last month: would NASA’s partnership with commercial companies to develop astronaut transports be cheaper if the companies competing for NASA funds combined their efforts into a single “all for one and one for all” project?
Similarly, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) made the same stupid argument in her continuing effort to keep the funding of the Space Launch System, the rocket-formerly-called-Constellation, as high as possible, at the cost of cutting everything else in NASA if necessary.
If you needed any evidence that members of Congress are ignorant idiots, you only need read the comments of these elected officials at these hearings to get your proof. Wolf or Hutchison as well as several others from both parties very clearly haven’t the slightest idea what these various space companies are building. Nor do they have the faintest notion of the difficulties entailed in building these manned space vessels.
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The X-37B: The Air Force admits it has a fleet of two, does not plan on increasing the size of that fleet, but also plans many more missions for both spacecraft.
An astronaut answers hundreds of questions about his flight to ISS on Reddit.
Soap opera: Russia’s deputy prime minister today blasted Vladimir Popovkin, the head the Russian space agency, and one space contractor for the scandals and public backbiting involving both.
The [contractor’s] accusations apparently come as a response to Popovkin’s comments on Monday. The official accused “space industry contractors” of disseminating false rumors about him because they were dissatisfied with his attempt to reform the industry. Popovkin was hospitalized earlier this month because of exhaustion caused by a hectic schedule and frequent jet lags, according to official statements. Some media reported it was due to injuries sustained in a brawl.
Hallelujah! NASA is considering doing a simulated 500 day Mars mission on ISS.
The Russians want to do this badly, and have been pressing NASA to go along, with no luck, for more than a decade. That it took that long for NASA to finally realize the need tells us much about the American space agency.
This bodes well: Private space station builder Bigelow is hiring again.
One interesting tidbit from this article is the description of the company’s negotiations with NASA to attach a Bigelow module to ISS.
The company has been negotiating with NASA for about two years on the potential deal, and that Bigelow has completed various planning and development milestones for NASA. “We’ve been in a series of discussions with NASA over the past two years, with regard to the BEAM project,” Gold told Space News. “They were initiated as part of a proposal in 2010, and we’re hopeful an announcement will be made in the not-too-distant future.”
NASA gave no sign that a deal with Bigelow was imminent. “We do have a no-cost contract with Bigelow to cover early requirements development [for BEAM] but it is not for the flight article,” NASA spokesman Josh Buck said in a March 20 email. “The Agency has not made a decision to go to a flight system yet.” [emphasis mine]
Two years to discuss “planning and development,” and still no decision. My guess is that NASA management doesn’t want to buy a Bigelow module, as it would be relatively cheap and therefore wouldn’t spread much money to NASA centers. They just can’t say no for political reasons.
And if they do want to do it, the slow pace of their decision-making process demonstrates clearly why they shouldn’t be entrusted to build anything in the future.
Isn’t it nice to live in a free country? The FAA has issued a draft environmental impact statement, required before the agency will allow SpaceShipTwo to be launched from the Mohave Air and Space Port.
If the Wright Brothers had had to jump through the modern bureaucratic hoops required by today’s federal government, they probably wouldn’t have gotten their airplane off the ground until after World War I.
Aviation Week looks at the launch challenges facing SpaceX over the next two years.
Though it is very clear SpaceX has a tough schedule of launches coming up, with much of the future of American aerospace riding on their success, this article is strangely hostile to the company. There is no doubt the company has fallen behind schedule, but the list of customers who have been willing to commit to the company is quite impressive, especially considering that SpaceX literally didn’t exist six years ago.
I’ll make several predictions:
Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, aiming to complete a record-setting 120,000 foot dive from edge of space, successfully completed a 71,581 foot practice dive today.
From launch to touchdown, the entire test flight lasted just over eight minutes, officials said. According to Baumgartner, the toughest part of the leap was the extreme cold he experienced high up in Earth’s atmosphere. “I could hardly move my hands,” the skydiver said in a statement. “We’re going to have to do some work on that aspect.”
Baumgartner is gearing up for an even bigger leap — his so-called “space jump” — from 120,000 feet (36,576 m) this summer. The current record for highest-altitude skydive is 102,800 feet (31,333 m), set in 1960 by U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger.
Thank you Barack! Europe, dumped by Obama administration and NASA, has teamed up with Russia to build its ExoMars orbiter and lander.
A prototype of a new space junk radar system has successfully demonstrated it can track objects smaller than an inch across.
This resolution is considered ten times better than previous designs. The cost to build the fully operational system is estimated to be $3.5 billion.
I wonder where we will get the money.
Competition rules! Russia’s space agency has proposed a space exploration plan through 2030, including missions to the Moon and Mars, in an effort to catch up with the U.S.
Good news for commercial space: SpaceX has gotten another launch contract, this time to put up four satellites for an Asian/Central American communications partnership.
Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.
There had been hints of this discovery in an earlier report, but today’s paper is the first published science on the subject.
The results are not only important for finding out the medical challenges of weightlessness. They illustrate once again the need to do long extended flights on ISS. Without that research we are never going to be able to fly humans to other planets.
Venus Express was blinded for four days last week after being hit by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun.
The robot rules: Dextre has successfully completed its first round of operations in its satellite refueling demonstration on ISS.
On March 6, film director and deep water diver James Cameron grabbed the record for the deepest solo dive ever, 26791 feet or more than five miles.
Moreover, this dive was only practice for an even deeper dive to come.
Want a job building spaceships? The spaceship companies in Mohave are hiring.
There are several hundred open positions in Mojave as companies such as the Spaceship Company, XCOR and Scaled Composites begin to ramp up operations. “It’s ironic that we’re having a recruitment problem in Mojave,” said Stu Witt, CEO and general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port. He added that this is a good problem to have.
A look at China’s rocket engine development program.
The detailed look at the robotic satellite refueling demo that is taking place on ISS this week.
