Florida Rocket Has Fallen on Cuba
(Source: SPACErePORT)
Are Cuba and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula safe from Texas-launched Falcon
rocket hardware? On November 30, 1960, a Thor DM-21 rocket veered off
course and debris
fell on Cuba, reportedly killing a cow. The rocket, a predecessor
to today's Delta family of rockets, launched from Complex 17 at the
Cape Canaveral Spaceport. Forty years later, CIA Director George Tenet
mentioned the incident jokingly in a Sep.
2000 speech to the NRO:
“One of (the) more spectacular failures rained debris down on Cuba.
Havana charged that a cow was killed in a deliberate US action. The
Cubans soon paraded another cow through the streets with a placard
reading ‘Eisenhower, you murdered one of my sisters’. It was the first
and last time that a satellite has been used in the production of
ground beef. The episode has gone down in history as the herd shot
round the world.” (3/24)
NASA Partners With Micro Aerospace
Solutions To Use KSC Labs (Source: NASA)
NASA has signed an agreement with Micro Aerospace Solutions (MAS) of
Melbourne, Fla., for use of an offline hardware processing "clean room"
laboratory and office space at Kennedy Space Center's Space Station
Processing Facility. MAS will utilize the area to perform small
satellite flight hardware and payload assembly, as well as testing and
checkout operations.
The initial two-year agreement will allow Micro Aerospace Solutions
access to the facility to begin work on April 1, 2013. MAS is a small
business established in 2000, specializing in software, electrical and
mechanical design engineering services. The company is involved in a
wide variety of engineering disciplines including software engineering,
thruster designs, propulsion systems, attitude control, command and
data handling, as well as computer and communications systems for small
and nanosatellites.
Micro Aerospace Solutions will relocate current employees to KSC to
perform the work. More employees may be added depending upon pending
project announcements. MAS is lead avionics integrator and software
developer for the NASA Sunjammer small satellite mission to demonstrate
a solar sail for propulsion in space. (3/22)
Black Hole - Star Pair Orbiting at
Dizzying Speed (Source: ESA)
ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope has helped to identify a star and a
black hole that orbit each other at the dizzying rate of once every 2.4
hours, smashing the previous record by nearly an hour. The black hole
in this compact pairing, known as MAXI J1659-152, is at least three
times more massive than the Sun, while its red dwarf companion star has
a mass only 20% that of the Sun. The pair is separated by roughly a
million kilometres.
The duo were discovered on 25 September 2010 by NASA’s Swift space
telescope and were initially thought to be a gamma-ray burst. Later
that day, Japan’s MAXI telescope on the International Space Station
found a bright X-ray source at the same place. More observations from
ground and space telescopes, including XMM-Newton, revealed that the
X-rays come from a black hole feeding off material ripped from a tiny
companion. (3/19)
Megavolcanoes Tied to Pre-Dinosaur
Mass Extinction (Source: Space Daily)
Along sea cliffs in southern England, geologist Paul Olsen of Columbia
University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory samples rocks from near
the 201,564,000-year Triassic extinction boundary. Credit: Kevin
Krajick/Earth Institute. Scientists examining evidence across the world
from New Jersey to North Africa say they have linked the abrupt
disappearance of half of earth's species 200 million years ago to a
precisely dated set of gigantic volcanic eruptions.
The eruptions may have caused climate changes so sudden that many
creatures were unable to adapt-possibly on a pace similar to that of
human-influenced climate warming today. The extinction opened the way
for dinosaurs to evolve and dominate the planet for the next 135
million years, before they, too, were wiped out in a later planetary
cataclysm. (3/24)
Does Musk Really Love Texas, Or Is It
Just a Ploy? (Source: Florida Today)
Is SpaceX going to launch from Texas or not? Based on recent news
reports, SpaceX seems destined to do more in Texas than test engines
and prototype vehicles. It’ll be concerning if Florida, NASA, the U.S.
Air Force and other interested parties can’t do what’s necessary to
keep more of SpaceX’s expanding operations somewhere on the
underutilized spaceport that includes Kennedy Space Center and Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station.
The long and daunting government hurdles to approving launch sites,
approving launch vehicles and approving everything else related to
flying from this coast could be less cumbersome at the company’s
alternate site in Texas, the company hints. Musk keeps talking Texas
up, swinging his position from “might” launch from Texas to “probably
will” launch from Texas, which is promising a range of tax and other
incentives to land what could be a dozen commercial launches a year of
the company’s Falcon rockets.
This could be a ploy to get more out of sites like Florida, where he’s
long fretted about red tape slowing down his bid to dramatically
simplify and lower the cost of launching. In testimony earlier this
month before a Texas legislative panel, however, he hit on the bottom
line. Florida could still keep the future flight business with SpaceX,
and gets its commercial launch complex, if it makes a “compelling” case
on the financial side. Translation: make me a better incentives offer
and we’ll talk more. (3/24)
Masten Aerospace Simulating Planterary
Landing Trajectories in Mojave (Source: Space Safety)
The Xombie suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle (sRLV) developed by
Masten Space Systems completed a successful flight in the framework of
NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, on March 22. “Today [March 22] saw
the first successful test flight in a new campaign testing GENIE flight
control system integrated onboard Masten’s Xombie platform” reported a
statement of NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program.
The test was conducted at the Mojave Air and Space Port, in California
to simulate Martian and Lunar landing trajectories. Xombie is a fully
reusable vertical takeoff and vertical landing launch vehicle, which is
used for low speed and low altitude testing. It is powered by a single
engine capable of outputting 3 kN of thrust. Xombie is equipped with a
hypervisor enabling third party software to control the vehicle in
flight while Masten maintains the guidance, navigation and control
supervision. (3/24)
Mars Curiosity Rover Gets Back to
Sending Snapshots (Source: NBC)
After a week of down time due to a computer glitch, NASA's Mars
Curiosity rover is once again sending back pictures of its rocky Red
Planet locale at Yellowknife Bay. In this fresh panorama, the rover
looks as if it's sticking its drill-equipped robotic arm right in your
face. "That drill is hungry, looking for something tasty to eat, and
'you' (loaded with water and organics) are it," jokes scientist-writer
Ken Kremer, who collaborated with Italian colleague Marco Di Lorenzo to
assemble the panorama. Click here.
(3/23)
Hubble Has 3 More Years to Make
Amazing Discoveries (Source: LA Times)
Scientists and space junkies got some good news from NASA on Friday:
The space agency announced it would keep the Hubble Space Telescope in
operation through at least April 30, 2016. The three-year extension
will cost NASA $76 million, according to the announcement. Hubble is
operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore through
a contract with the Assn. of Universities for Research in Astronomy.
(3/23)
Searching for Solar Systems Like Our
Own (Source: MIT News)
The solar system's configuration is learned in grade school, and
forever committed to memory with the help of foam balls, deconstructed
coat hangers, and paint. It's a fairly straightforward arrangement: The
sun revolves at the center as eight planets — along with dwarf planet
Pluto — orbit within the same plane, and in the same direction as the
sun's rotation. As it turns out, planets around far-off stars do not
always obey these rules, as Josh Winn has found.
Winn has found that many of these systems display very different
properties from our own, with planets circling at odd angles, out of
alignment with their stars' rotation. "The planet could be going over
the poles of the star instead of the equator, or going backward, or
revolving in the opposite direction," Winn says. "It's sort of a gift
from nature that it turned out these systems could be so interesting."
Winn and his group in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space
Research are deciphering the geometry of newly discovered planetary
systems. The group analyzes changes in starlight as a planet transits,
or eclipses, its star. These signals can give scientists clues to a
planet's orbit, as well as its size. (3/20)
Using Antarctic Microbes to Consider
Feasibility of Life on Mars (Source: Baltimore Sun)
Description: Unusual proteins within microbes allow the organisms to
survive in cold and salty conditions in Antarctica, and could in theory
help support life on Mars as well, according to NASA-funded study at
the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The study revealed
slight differences between core proteins in ordinary organisms and
those known as Haloarchaea, which can live in severe conditions with
extreme salinity or temperatures, for example.
They studied such microbes from Deep Lake, a salty body of water in
Antarctica, and found that atoms within the core proteins were more
loosely connected, "allowing them to be more flexible and functional,"
DasSarma said. Continuing research is exploring individual proteins
within a particular type of organism to learn about how the proteins
could be used in producing useful materials. (3/22)
How NASA Got an Android Handset Ready
to Go Into Space (Source: ARS Technica)
It’s what science fiction dreams are made of: brightly colored,
sphere-shaped robots that float above the ground, controlled by a tiny
computer brain. But it isn't fiction: it’s the SPHERES satellite, and
its brain is an Android smartphone. Click here.
(3/23)
Spaceflight Federation Supports FCC
Commercial Space Frequency (Source: CSF)
“The FCC has recognized the potential of the U.S. commercial
spaceflight industry by streamlining the process of obtaining
authorization to use radio frequencies during commercial launches,”
stated Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Michael
Lopez-Alegria. “In so doing, they have expressed their support for the
commercial space sector. I commend the FCC for taking this step and I
look forward to working with the Commission to continue to create a
welcoming regulatory environment for this new and promising high-tech
industry.” (3/18)
Intelsat Announces Proposed Offering
of Senior Notes (Source: Intelsat)
Intelsat S.A., the world’s leading provider of satellite services,
today announced that its subsidiary, “Intelsat Luxembourg,” intends to
offer $1,500,000,000 aggregate principal amount of senior notes due
2021 (the “notes”). Intelsat Luxembourg’s obligations under the notes
will be guaranteed by Intelsat S.A. (3/19)
Astronomers Call on Congress to
Support R&D Investments (Source: AAS)
Fifteen members of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) traveled to
Washington, DC to express the need for sustained and predictable
federal funding of research and development (R&D) programs —
including NASA, NSF, and the Department of Energy — which are
critically important to American economic growth.
The AAS delegation was part of a group of more than 200 scientists,
engineers, and business leaders who converged on Capitol Hill for the
18th annual Congressional Visits Day (CVD), held March 12-13 and
sponsored by the Science-Engineering-Technology Work Group. CVD is
coordinated by coalitions of companies, professional societies, and
educational institutions whose members feel strongly that science and
technology comprise the cornerstone of our nation's future. (3/21)
China's 'String of Pearls' in Space
(Source: IDSA)
Over the years China has been helping countries in the region to
develop strategic maritime centers. It has assisted various states in
creating new maritime facilities or improvising on their existing
maritime assets. China is playing a critical role in developing various
shipping facilities, constructing deep water ports and naval bases,
developing pipeline projects and putting in place mechanisms for
intelligence gathering.
By doing this, it has succeeded in engaging the various countries of
the region in India’s neighborhood. China’s interests are not only
restricted to establishing itself as an effective maritime power. It
also has significant interests in other emerging domains of power
projection like cyber and space. Particularity in the space arena China
has been making significant investments and has made extremely rapid
progress. Click here.
(3/21)
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