April 22 News Items

Homans May Seek U.S. House or Senate Seat (Source: Spaceport blog)
Homans has been rumored to be a possible Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Pete V. Domenici or the U.S. House seat now held by Heather Wilson. How long Homans will hold the Spaceport Authority post is unclear.

Applications Made for Over 200 Suborbital Flights - Space Adventures (Source: Interfax)
Space Adventures space tourism company, U.S., continues preparations for sub-orbital flights, the company's Vice President Chris Faranetta told the press. The company has received about 200 applications, he said. Faranetta also said that the Myasishchev firm remains the company's Russian partner. Under a joint project, suborbital spaceships will be launched from Myasishchev M-55 high-altitude planes. Each spaceship will carry a crew of eight-ten members. A flight will tentatively cost some $100,000. The crew will remain in zero-gravity conditions for about 15 minutes, after which the spaceship will start a descent. Airfields for receiving suborbital spaceships are expected to be built in Indonesia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, Faranetta said.

Space Adventures Preparing for Commercial Flights to Moon (Source: Interfax)
Space Adventures has been developing a project to fly two private citizens to the Moon and has received the first applications. The mission is priced at $100 million. If the project is approved and funded in 2007, the first tourists will fly to the Moon in five years. But exactly when the first investment is made depends on the Russian space agency and Energia space corporation, since Space Adventures does not make the spaceships. Two options are being considered for flights to the Moon. One is for the crew to be launched on a Soyuz vehicle, which will dock with a transfer stage in orbit and travel to the Moon. The second option would be to assemble a lunar vehicle on the International Space Station. The second option is a lot more interesting, said Space Adventures' vice president.

NASA Throttles Up for Change as End of Shuttle Era Nears (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
With only three years remaining before the space-shuttle fleet's planned retirement, NASA managers have begun tackling the thorny issues that will dictate the program's end. Critical facilities must be overhauled to support planned human missions to the moon. Billions of dollars' worth of obsolete shuttle hardware must be disposed of. And, most difficult of all, thousands of jobs must be shifted or eliminated as the shuttle era ends and the new Constellation project takes off. Nowhere will the changes be felt more keenly than at Kennedy Space Center, which will see a transformation of its work force, facilities and operations.

Today, there are about 13,000 full-time workers at KSC, consisting of roughly 11,000 contractors and 2,000 government employees. Most of them work on the shuttle. One of NASA's biggest challenges is to avoid an early exodus of critically skilled employees as the program winds down. "We have a real challenge to make sure that the people who work so hard at KSC and at the support centers around KSC stay all the way until the end," said a NASA official. Another challenge will be moving workers from shuttle operations to the Constellation program. Many workers were displaced and their skills were lost between the final Apollo flight in 1975 and the first shuttle mission in 1981. NASA wants to avoid a repeat.

NASA hopes to keep workers busy during the gap with ground and flight tests of the new Orion capsule and Ares rocket systems. As the shuttle nears retirement, the number of civil-servant astronauts is projected to drop from 99 in 2009 to 74 in 2011 -- a cut of about one-fourth. The majority would be assigned to the space-station program, with about two dozen working in the Constellation project. Click here to view the article.

Muslim Satellites On Orbit (Source: Islam Online)
With the dawn of the space age, Muslim nations have joined the international community in their interest to put artificial satellites into orbit to serve an increasing range of applications for the benefit of humankind. On April 17, a new milestone for some Muslim nations has been made, as seven Muslim-owned satellites went into orbit. A Dnepr rocket, a retired soviet-era intercontinental ballistic missile modified to carry commercial cargo to space, launched with the satellites from Kazakhstan. Two of these, Egypt-owned MisrSat-1 and Saudi-owned SaudiSat-3, are remote sensing micro-satellites used to photograph Earth, while the remaining five owned by Saudi Arabia, SaudiComSat-3,4,5,6,7, are communication satellites. Seven other CubSat nano-satellites were also onboard the Dnepr rocket that belong to University projects in the United States and Columbia.

Cyclone-4 to be Launched from Brazil's Alcantara Spaceport (Source: Spaceport blog)
Ukraine and Brazil will begin building a Tsyklon-4/Cyclone-4 space rocket complex at Brazil's Alcantara cosmodrome in the fall of 2007, a Ukrainian National Space Agency official said April 19. Ukraine designed the Tsyklon-4 to launch satellites into near-Earth orbits, and it will be able to carry a 12,100-pound load. It reportedly might carry a Chinese-Brazilian observation satellite. Brazil is very much interested in commercial launches from Alcantara, using both home- and foreign-built vehicles and promising good business for the parties involved, Ukraine and Russia included. The center's geographic location is better than those of other countries in higher latitudes. Alcantara's proximity to the equator, where the Earth rotates more quickly, allows the weight of payloads sent aloft to be increased by 30% to 40%. The Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, which will soon launch a Russian Soyuz-2 vehicle, could become Alcantara's rival in near-equatorial regions in the next few years.

Russian Space Agency Ready to Send Abramovich Around Moon (Source: RIA Novosti)
Russia's Space Agency is ready to send Russia's richest man, London-based Roman Abramovich, on a flight around the Moon for $300 million after 2010. Some press reports have said Roman Abramovich has submitted his candidacy for flying around the Moon for $300 million," Anatoly Perminov, head of the agency, said. "The figure is attractive, and ... we will consider the proposal after 2010." Perminov said until 2009 all space tourist flights had been signed up.