From Clark Lindsey: Branson says Virgin Galactic will fly a suborbital flight within a year.
Better buy that ticket now if you want to see the last shuttle launch from the best spot: Online prices have soared for space shuttle Atlantis launch tickets.
Tiny little hairs on the wings of bats help control their flight.
Busy day for travel to and from ISS: The European unmanned ATV freighter Johannes Kepler burned up in the atmosphere even as a Russian Progress freighter was launched.
In related news, the U.S. and ESA are in negotiations to merge the European unmanned ATV freighter program with NASA’s manned Orion derivative. At the same time, Europe has announced its plans to test fly a reusable space plane.
The first Soyuz launch from French Guiana has now been scheduled for October 20, 2011.
According to the chief of the Russian space agency, it presently does not have the capacity to produce additional Soyuz capsule for tourist flights.
NASA is about to decide on its shuttle heavy-lift replacement, and it looks like it will be almost entirely shuttle-derived.
As I have said previously, this rocket will almost certainly never fly. NASA has to start over after spending billions and years developing Constellation, and is being given less money and time to do it.
And even if I am wrong and this rocket does fly, I bet it will do only one flight and then be retired as too costly.
Turf war: SpaceX has sued a NASA safety expert (with ties to the Ares rocket program) who questioned the safety of the Falcon 9 rocket.
An update from Messenger.
This ain’t good. One of the reasons ESA controllers recently put the comet probe Rosetta into hibernation for two and a half years was in order to buy time to solve a serious technical problem.
Mission managers said the hibernation will permit Rosetta to rest its four reaction wheels, two of which have shown signs of degradation. The satellite needs three to function, and one of the two problem wheels will be used only as a spare when the satellite is awakened in January 2014 in preparation for its approach to a comet.
During a tanking test of the space shuttle Atlantis today a valve to the main engines leaked, requiring replacement and raising questions whether the July 8 launch date can be met.
Second X-51 hypersonic flight crashes prematurely.
After what the US Air Force described as a ‘flawless’ flight to the launch point aboard a Boeing B-52 mothership, the X-51 was successfully boosted to Mach 5.0 by a rocket booster. The Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne scramjet engine successfully ignited using its initial fuel, ethylene. During the immediate transition to JP-7, the conventional fuel that makes the X-51 unique, an inlet unstart occurred. A subsequent attempt to restart and reorient to optimal conditions was unsuccessful.
SpaceShipTwo completes two glide test flights within twenty-four hours.
Don’t bet on it: A memo signed today by a senior NASA official marks the end of the Constellation program.
All this does is make the name change of the program-formerly-called-Constellation official. The pork continues nonetheless!
A testbed for testing the robotic refueling of satellites will be installed on ISS on last shuttle flight.
This whole testbed is the brainchild of Frank Cepollina, the man behind all of the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions. Until recently it was doubtful there was room for this project on any shuttle mission. That he nonetheless managed to get it on the last flight is another testament to Cepollina’s incredible ability to get things done. And if the tests work on ISS, NASA will then consider launching operational systems for refueling several perfectly usable climate satellites now in orbit.
SpaceX gets another launch contract for its Falcon 9.
European lifting body entry spacecraft is about to get its final approval before construction.
Scaled Composites continues to ramp up the test flight program of SpaceShipTwo. More here.
The modern American space effort: Apollo spacesuits head to the museum.
China’s second lunar probe, Chang’e 2, has been boosted out of lunar orbit and beyond.
The second X-51 hypersonic flight is now scheduled for the week of June 13.
A camera has been installed on the last shuttle external tank so that its destruction in the atmosphere can be observed.
Human bones were part of the cargo on board the Soyuz capsule launched to ISS today.
“The fragments of human bones will be used to study the causes and dynamics of decalcination of bone tissue in a long space flight,” the head of the experiment, Tatiana Krasheninnikova told Itar-Tass. The problem of decalcination is a headache for medics responsible for spacemen’s health. Researches in this area are conducted by scientists from many ISS member states. However it is impossible to take sample of spacemen’s bones, only their urine is being examined, and a complete picture of dynamics of changes in human bones is not clear, she noted.
A NASA Inspector General report issued today [pdf] notes continuing worries about the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for launch later this year.
Remaining Unresolved Technical Issues: Although Project managers have overcome the majority of technical issues that led to the [2009] launch delay, as of March 2011 three significant technical issues remain unresolved. . . . Because of technical issues related to these three and other items, Project managers must complete nearly three times the number of critical tasks than originally planned in the few months remaining until launch. [emphasis mine]
A new crew, launched by Russia, is heading to the International Space Station.
There was a small fire in Endeavour’s landing gear when it landed last week.
NASA has finally released the photos of Endeavour docked to ISS, taken from a departing Soyuz.
