January 7 News Items

Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (Source: Space.com)
Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected. The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it. Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can. Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum. The newly detected signal is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission). ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe. Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy. (1/7)

Boeing Ordered to Pay ICO $631 Million in Damages (Source: AP)
Boeing Co. has been ordered to pay former customer ICO Global Communications Ltd. $631 million in damages after a California court approved a jury verdict against the Chicago-based aerospace company. The Los Angeles Superior Court backed a jury's decision in October to award $371 million in compensatory damages, and $236 million punitive damages, plus prejudgement interest, ICO said Tuesday. Boeing will also be required to pay ICO 10 percent interest on the full judgment starting Jan. 2, the company said. (1/7)

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Mothership Faces Rudder Problem (Source: Flight International)
Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo may need to have its rudder and yaw stability improved to counter issues such as the greater fishtail effect that would be expected with a twin fuselage aircraft. Flight International has learned that WK2 prime contractor Scaled Composites' test pilot Peter Siebold was finding it hard to keep the aircraft on the runway during the 20 December high-speed taxi trials preceding its maiden flight the following day. This could be due to inadequate yaw damping. (1/7)

Perfect Space Storm Could be Catastrophic on Earth (Source: Space.com)
A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm. Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation. The prediction is based in part on major solar storm in 1859 caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires. It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much more is at risk. "A contemporary repetition of the [1859] event would cause significantly more extensive (and possibly catastrophic) social and economic disruptions," the researchers conclude. (1/7)

Boeing Increases Capability of On-Orbit US Navy Satellite (Source: Boeing)
Boeing has successfully reconfigured an on-orbit U.S. Navy satellite, adding 30 percent more communications capability. The satellite, the 11th in the Ultra-High Frequency Follow-On (UFO) series built by Boeing, was launched in 2003 and supports the Navy's global communications network, serving ships at sea and a variety of other U.S. military fixed and mobile terminals. UFO 11 has the most sophisticated digital signal processor in the constellation. Its ability to reprogram existing user channels allowed Boeing to exploit small, unused portions of the allocated radio frequency spectrum to add 10 channels, for a total of 54. (1/7)

Officials Still Investigating Failure of Anti-Missile Satellite (Source: AIA)
Four months after Northrop Grumman Corp.'s DSP 23 anti-missile satellite failed in orbit, defense officials are still trying to determine what went wrong. "When you lose your newest satellite, you're taking years off the tail end of how long the constellation is going to be effective," says the Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson. One official told Reuters the exact cause of the failure could remain a mystery, and the theories range from software failure to solar flares or even sabotage. (1/7)

50 Years of America in Space Time Line (Source: AIA)
Visit AIA's Web site at www.aia-aerospace.org to see the 50 Years of America in Space flight time line. Featuring 50 milestones in U.S. space history, the time line includes accomplishments of NASA, the Defense Department and national security agencies, commercial ventures, treaties and an array of space facts. Pictures include the Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A spacecraft, which demonstrated people could withstand weightlessness for the duration of a trip to the moon as well as the first ever space rendezvous. The site also includes AIA white papers and links to other space-related Web sites. (1/7)

Study: Extra Shuttle Flights Have Big Risk (Source: Florida Today)
NASA could keep its shuttle fleet operating through 2015 and close a five-year gap in U.S. human spaceflight, but the cost would top $11 billion, an internal agency study shows. The risk to U.S. astronaut crews would rise dramatically, and plans for lunar exploration would be severely hampered. But NASA could retain critically skilled workers during the transition between the shuttle program and Project Constellation, the nation's bid to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

"This option eliminates the gap between shuttle and Constellation operations, and allows NASA and its contractors to maintain the critical skills necessary to successfully operate future human spaceflight programs," NASA officials wrote in a draft of the study. Charts show the current shuttle work force -- which now numbers 11,900 -- would gradually decrease to 7,900 in 2015, rather than drop to zero in 2011. (1/6)