March 3 News Items

China May Try to Limit Opponents’ Satellites (Source: MSNBC)
China is developing the ability to limit or prevent the use of satellites by potential adversaries during times of crisis, the Pentagon said Monday in a report to Congress. The report, the latest in a series of annual assessments of China's military power, highlights developments in China's commercial space program and asserts that some can be of military use. And it says Chinese leaders have been silent on the question of a military motivation for their space programs. The Chinese military, known as the People's Liberation Army, is acquiring technologies to improve its ability to operate in space and is "developing the ability to attack an adversary's space assets," the report said. "PLA writings emphasize the necessity of 'destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy's reconnaissance/observation and communications satellites,' suggesting that such systems, as well as navigation and early warning satellites, could be among initial targets of attack to 'blind and deafen the enemy," the report said.

Clinton Statement in Support of U.S. Aerospace and Aviation (Source: SpaceRef.com)
"Our aerospace and aviation workforce is the best in the world, powered by hundreds of thousands of workers across the country, including more than 60,000 in Ohio and 180,000 in Texas. American aerospace is a flagship industry - producing an annual positive trade balance of close to $60 billion. Hillary will double NASA's and FAA's aeronautics R&D budgets as part of her plan to reverse the Bush administration's war on science. She will pursue a balanced strategy of robust human spaceflight, expanded robotic spaceflight, and enhanced space and Earth science activities. She will speed development, testing, and deployment of next-generation launch and crew exploration vehicles to replace the aging Space Shuttle program. At the same time, Hillary's innovation agenda calls for stimulating in-house research and commercial development by making the R&D tax credit permanent. She will also double federal investment in basic research, which is critical for ensuring that America is at the forefront of new ideas."

"To meet the aerospace industry's need for scientists, engineers and technicians, Hillary has called for tripling the number of NSF fellowships and other incentives for bringing more people, particularly women and minorities, into the fields of mathematics, science and engineering. Hillary will reward teachers that enter math and science disciplines and strengthen our K-12 education system to ensure we are producing the best future scientists and engineers in the world. Hillary will appoint an FAA director whose chief responsibility will be to speed a smooth transition to a Next Generation Air Transportation System. Hillary sees the Next Generation system as vital to accommodating the growth in air travel, to enhancing the safety and competitiveness of American aviation, and to improving air travel for consumers."

NASA's Popularity Rises as Vote Nears (Source: Houston Chronicle)
In the countdown to Tuesday's Texas primary, the candidates still in the race are positioning themselves as astronauts' best friends — but what they would actually do for manned space travel once elected remains up in the air. Under President Bush's current plan, the space shuttle will be retired in 2010. The new Orion moonship, developed under what is called the Constellation program, won't be ready until 2015, leaving a gap of five years. And with every candidate coming to Texas and professing devotion to NASA, space-watchers are trying to determine what the candidates actually will do when faced with a reeling economy and a record federal debt.

California Spaceport First-Responders Honored in Sacramento (Source: Bakersfield Californian)
There were far more unknowns than knowns when an explosion rocked the Mojave Air & Space Port last summer. They knew two people were dead and others were critically injured. They didn't know whether another explosion would happen. Entering that chaotic situation were employees from Hall Ambulance. They treated and transported the injured and did their jobs like any other call. Those employees, as well as two others who also excelled at emergency responder work throughout the year, were honored at the California Ambulance Association's Stars of Life program at the state Capitol in Sacramento.

Editorial: Russian Space Program Still Plagued by Numerous Problems (Source: RIA Novosti)
The development of Russia's high-tech sector, primarily the national space program, resembles a Camel Trophy race, while official reports do not always reflect the real situation. In late February, Anatoly Perminov, director of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) said he positively assessed the results of Russia's space exploration in 2007. He said that all projects had been financed in line with official programs. According to him, successful efforts were made to implement the federal space program until 2006-2015, to deploy the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and to expand national space centers under federal target programs.

With the exception of two mere trifles, the 2007 space program has yielded mostly positive results. In late November, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who oversees the space program and the high-tech sector, severely criticized the work of Roskosmos. He said the agency had completed all Soviet-era projects and was no longer able to manufacture up-to-date and competitive products. On New Year's Eve, Ivanov told a meeting of the Roskosmos board that the agency had failed to fulfil the GLONASS program. Visit http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080303/100475822.html to view the article.

Water on Mars Theory Debunked? (Source: Discovery News)
With great excitement, scientists in 2006 unveiled photographs of recently carved gullies on Mars, believing that a burst of underground water may have left its mark. Not so, say researchers with the University of Arizona, who have been using topographical data derived from new images of Mars and running them through computer models. In December 2006, Michael Malin, with San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems, and colleagues published an article in Science theorizing that bright streaks found in two Martian gullies which appeared since 1999 "suggest that liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars in the past decade." Turns out the gullies bear more similarity to channels carved from dry granular debris, such as sand or gravel, said Jon Pelletier, a lead author of a paper on the findings appearing in this month's issue of Geology. "It rules out pure liquid water," Pelletier said.

ATV, Cygnus, and Dragon (Source: Space Review)
The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) resupply ship from French Guyana to the International Space Station (ISS) this month. It’s been a long wait. The ATV was once planed to launch towards the end of 2004, but, like so many space projects, has suffered from numerous delays and misjudgments. Once operational, it will be the Rolls Royce of space delivery vans. An ESA press release describes it as “a multi-functional spacecraft, combining the fully automatic capabilities of an unmanned vehicle with the safety requirements of a crewed vehicle.”

Meanwhile NASA's COTS program is moving ahead. SpaceX already has a full-scale engineering model of their Dragon capsule. The early version of the Dragon is designed to carry cargo, both pressurized and unpressurized, to the ISS. The great difference between ATV and Dragon is that, right from the start, the US capsule was designed to be used to carry people into orbit. The Dragon will be able to evolve rapidly and at minimal cost from a purely cargo-carrying system into a human-rated vehicle. This means that while the ATV will come into service years before Dragon, Dragon will be able to carry paying human customers into orbit long before the European vehicle.

A possible newcomer to this competition is Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus vehicle. Orbital won a COTS award last month to build a Cygnus cargo carrier with similar payload capacity to the Dragon and to be launched from their new Taurus 2 rocket. As far as we know, however, the company has no plans to turn Cygnus into a human-rated system. It’s much too early to know if Orbital’s Cygnus will have any significant advantages over either ATV or Dragon.

Endeavour To Launch March 11 (Source: Aerospace Daily)
NASA has approved space shuttle Endeavour to launch March 11 on STS-123, a 16-day mission that will mark the longest International Space Station (ISS) visit by the orbiter to date. If Endeavour can't launch March 11 or 12, it will have to stand down until March 17 to deconflict with a Delta II rocket launch planned from Cape Canaveral. Complicating the mission somewhat is the expected arrival in orbit of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which is scheduled to launch March 8. Having the shuttle, station and ATV in orbit at once means that each of the vehicles will experience pre-planned communications blackouts while NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) service the others. If necessary, however, the TDRS system could serve all three vehicles at the same time. The ATV will place itself in a parking orbit approximately 2 kilometers from the station and shuttle. It will not approach the station until the end of March, following the shuttle's departure, when it will perform two demonstration dockings and then its first actual docking.

Britain Urged to Become a Satellite Nation (Source: The Guardian)
Britain can play an important role in space exploration by exploiting its skills in the satellite sector rather than joining the competition in manned space flights, according to David Williams, head of Avanti, a satellite communications company. "There aren't unlimited resources - we have to prioritize in areas where we have an economic advantage," he said.

Britain should be creating the communications infrastructure that will be needed as exploration expands deeper into space, he said. Countries such as the US, China, India and Russia, as well as the European Space Agency, are working on deep-space exploration. "If mankind is going to exploit the resources of the solar system, you are going to have to travel over very long distances and you are going to have to communicate over very long distances and you will need a network of data-relay satellites. The UK has a big advantage. We have the opportunity to control the space internet, which is going to be this network of data-relay satellites."