The launch of space shuttle Endeavour has now been delayed by NASA until May 8 at the earliest.
Technical problems have delayed the last launch of the shuttle Endeavour at least 48 hours.
The countdown for Endeavour’s last launch has begun.
Confirmed: one of two tickets for a lunar flyby on a Soyuz has been sold. More here.
China is asking the public to name its space station.
Eric Berger at the Houston Chronicle asks: Will fewer humans in space lead to more robot explorers?
In a word, no. In the past fifty years, every time the budget of the manned space program has been cut, the unmanned program shrank as well. And every time the budget of manned space grew, so did the budget for unmanned missions.
Funding for the final shuttle flight this summer is now assured.
Some details behind Blue Origin’s manned spacecraft.
“For example, many metals burn more easily in reduced gravity, liquids behave differently, both of which have important implications for safety and the way machinery and equipment operate in spacecraft and space stations. The beer experiments assisted in determining the correct level of carbonation, so that it can in the future be appropriately enjoyed by humans in reduced gravity,”
An evening pause: Though this took place last week, on the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, I can’t let it go by, especially because it is so nicely done. Trust me, for two flute players to play a duet with one several hundred miles up in space and traveling more than 17,500 miles per hour while the other is safely on Earth is not easy.
India has successfully launched three satellites using its low-Earth-orbit rocket.
The launch could not have come at a more apt time than now. The old reliable workhorse vehicle was last used in a July 2010 launch. ISRO’s next two launches of the indigenous higher-powered GSLV failed.
More on the incredibly shrinking Orion program.
It ain’t gonna fly, and if I’m wrong and it does, it will accomplish little in the process — except spend a lot of pork money we no longer can afford.
Medicine in space does not have the right stuff.
After 28 months, the medication stored in space generally had a lower potency and degraded faster than those stored on the ground. Six medications on the space station underwent physical changes, such as discoloration and liquefaction, while such changes only occurred in two medications stored on the ground.
NASA has awarded the next set of commercial crew development agreements, giving contracts worth from $22 to $92 million to four companies, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Boeing. More here and here.
The amounts that NASA is giving these companies is minuscule, compared the monies spent on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Yet I bet they all get their rockets/capsules launched and in operation, supplying cargos and crews to low Earth orbit, before NASA even test fires its heavy-lift rocket.
Reality bites: NASA faces awkward, unfortunate spaceflight gap.
Boeing moves forward on its commercial manned capsule.
I am on the road today, so posting will be light. Though I have many things to say about today’s historic anniversary, fifty years after the first manned spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin, I simply won’t be able to post them. However, I plan to express some of my thoughts on the John Batchelor Show at 11:30 pm (Eastern time) tomorrow. Listen in live, or on his podcast posted shortly after the live show.
The ironies, however, are amazing, and quite depressing. On the same day we celebrate the start of manned space exploration, NASA administrator Charles Bolden will announce where the United States’s three retired shuttles will be put on display. Note also that he does this on the thirtieth anniversary of the first shuttle flight. It is almost as if the Obama administration’s desire to kill the American government space program is so strong that they have to rub salt in the wound as they do it.
I say this not so much because I am in favor of a big government space program (which I am not) but because the timing of this announcement once again illustrates how astonishingly tone-deaf the Obama administration continues to be about political matters.
Stagnation haunts Russian space program.
ISS plans week-long simulated Mars mission.
This is the right idea, but to really learn something NASA needs to commit to a year-plus long simulated mission.
The future is here: Spaceship lands at San Francisco airport. And yes, that is an accurate headline!
Russian spaceship “Gagarin” arrives at ISS.
Astronauts in ISS take cover as Chinese space junk flies past.
From the British science journal Nature: NASA human space-flight programme lost in transition.
Russia is accelerating its space program.
“It is the first time that the government has allocated decent financing to us,” Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said in a phone interview on April 2. The agency’s $3.5 billion budget for 2011 has almost tripled since 2007, reaching the highest since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “We can now advance on all themes a bit,” Perminov said.
Unlike 50 years ago, when beating the U.S. into space marked a geopolitical victory in the Cold War, Russia is focusing on the commercial, technological and scientific aspects of space travel. President Dmitry Medvedev has named aerospace one of five industries the government plans to nurture to help diversify the economy of the world’s largest energy supplier away from resource extraction.
Software engineers to the Moon!
Crazy? Absolutely! Impossible? Probably not! There are a growing number of people who believe that with federal funding for our space program getting scarce, the future lies in private-public partnerships. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s third job (after leading electric car company Tesla and acting as the Chairman of solar installer SolarCity) is heading up SpaceX, which was the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a rocketship. Virgin’s Richard Branson has a similar private space venture.
Three astronauts were launched to ISS today in a Soyuz capsule the Russians have named Gagarin, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his flight on April 12.
