News Summaries for November 17

U.S. Air Force Pushes For Orbital Test Vehicle, Launch from Florida (Source: Space.com)
There’s new military life in an old NASA project—the X-37 technology demonstrator. The Air Force announced today that it is developing an Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), based on the design of a NASA X-37 craft. It is to be designated as the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. The Air Force has decided to continue full-scale development and on-orbit testing of an unmanned long-duration, reusable space vehicle. The new OTV effort dovetails off of industry and government investments by Air Force, NASA, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The first orbital test flight of the OTV is planned for fiscal year 2008, with a launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on an Atlas V launch vehicle. The OTV is the first U.S. vehicle since the space shuttle with the ability to return experiments to Earth for further inspection and analysis.

Boeing Wins $674 Million in US Rocket Launch Work (Source: Reuters)
Boeing was awarded a $674 million contract to provide rocket launch services to the U.S. Air Force. The work includes launch operations at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, as well as mission integration, engineering and program management. The work will be completed in September 2007, the Pentagon said. The contract had been in the works for a long time and was difficult to negotiate because it involved converting commercial contract terms into a much more complex defense contract.

Wanted: Man to Land on Killer Asteroid and Nudge It From Path to Earth (Source: Guardian)
It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs. To save the day, NASA now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036.

NASA's Chris McKay said "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that NASA ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid. The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities."

House Spaceport Panel Being Eliminated (Source: Florida Today)
The House Spaceport and Technology Committee is being eliminated in the chamber's new committee structure being created by House Speaker-designate Marco Rubio. Instead, space industry issues will be included within another committee as it had been previously. Former chairman of the defunct committee, Rep. Bob Allen, said he discussed the change in a meeting with Rubio earlier this week. The Merritt Island Republican said he was promised that space issues would be folded into a committee that includes economic development.

Delta Successfully Delivers GPS Satellite (Source: Florida Today)
A Delta 2 rocket successfully delivered its Global Positioning System spacecraft to orbit after a Friday liftoff from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The countdown went fairly smoothly. The range was deemed "green" after a command destruct link in Antigua was fixed after being down earlier. The ascent of the launch vehicle also went well.

Soyuz Booster Rocket Launches from Kourou to Cost $50 Million (Source: RIA Novosti)
Launching one of Russia's new booster rockets from a site in French Guiana will cost customers $50 million, a European space company said Friday. Russian and French space officials signed a contract in February to launch four Soyuz-ST booster rockets from the Kourou launch site, on the northern coast of South America, over 10 years to orbit heavy cargoes. Considering that there will be four launches beginning in 2009, annual earnings will be $200 million. The project would pay for itself in seven to nine years.