Soyuz Launches Galileo Satellites From
Kourou Spaceport (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
A Soyuz rocket lifted off early this morning carrying two Galileo
navigation satellites. The Soyuz rocket launched from French Guiana on
schedule at 4:48 a.m. Eastern carrying the 13th and 14th Galileo
spacecraft. The Fregat upper stage will deploy the satellites into
their planned orbit nearly four hours after liftoff. The launch brings
the number of Galileo spacecraft in orbit to 14. (5/24)
House Budget Increases Planetary
Science, Cuts Earth Science (Source: Space News)
Planetary science wins, but Earth science and the Asteroid Redirect
Mission (ARM) lose in a House spending bill to be marked up today. The
House Appropriations Committee released the draft report accompanying
its commerce, justice and science spending bill that the committee will
take up this morning. The report increases funding for planetary
science by $327 million above NASA's request, including work on a
Europa orbiter and lander as well as other programs, like Discovery
missions. However, Earth science is cut by a similar amount, and the
report provides no funds to support ARM. (5/24)
Bolden: International Collaboration
Likely Despite Election Concerns (Source: Space News)
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says other nations are still
interested in cooperating with NASA despite uncertainty regarding the
upcoming election. Bolden said current and potential partners are
"concerned" about changes that could come when the next administration
takes office, but added such concerns are common during transitions,
and is not specific to the current presidential campaign. Bolden said
he plans on making a number of trips this summer to support
international cooperation, including a visit to China that may include
an agreement on aeronautics, but not space, cooperation. (5/24)
SpaceX's July ISS Resupply Mission
Will Attempt Falcon-9 Landing at Spaceport Pad (Source: The
Verge)
A July launch of a space station cargo mission will be SpaceX's next
opportunity to land a Falcon 9 on land. NASA announced Monday it is
scheduling the next SpaceX Dragon cargo mission to the station for no
earlier than July 16. SpaceX later confirmed that it will attempt to
land the first stage back at Cape Canaveral on that mission, its first
land landing attempt since the Orbcomm launch in December. Space
station cargo missions have sufficient excess performance to enable
land landings, unlike launches of geostationary satellites that require
landings at sea. (5/24)
Solar Superflares May Have Made Earth
Habitable (Source: Space.com)
Powerful "superflares" early in the sun's history could have helped
life form on Earth. Analysis of data from NASA's Kepler mission
suggests that young stars could generate as many as 10 superflares a
day, versus the one a century the sun currently produces. Those flares
could have helped warm the Earth enough to support life at a time when
the sun itself was only about 70 percent as bright as it is today,
overcoming what is known as the "faint young sun paradox." (5/24)
Ohio Airport May Be Renamed for John
Glenn (Source: Columbus Dispatch)
The Columbus, Ohio, airport could soon be renamed for John Glenn, the
former astronaut and U.S. senator. The Ohio Legislature is considering
adding language to a license plate bill that would rename Port Columbus
International Airport the John Glenn Columbus International Airport.
The proposal has the support of both the speaker of the Ohio House and
the mayor of Columbus. (5/24)
Could This ‘Mars Base Camp’ Really
Send Astronauts to the Red Planet in 2028? (Source: Washington
Post)
Lockheed’s vision of an orbital mission is somewhat pragmatic as
humans-to-Mars concepts go. A Mars landing is exceedingly difficult,
because the atmosphere is too thin to be of much help with aerobraking
or parachutes, but it is thick enough to cause turbulence or burn up
your spacecraft if you’re not careful.
The aerospace wizards have managed to land something as massive as a
small car on Mars (the Curiosity rover), but to put humans on the
surface they'd need to land something the size of a two-story house. So
Lockheed’s vision starts with an orbital mission, with a landing
sometime down the road — maybe 2033, Lockheed's chief technologist for
exploration systems Tony Antonelli said. Click here.
(5/24)
Arianespace to Supply Payload
Dispenser Systems for OneWeb Constellation (Source: Space Daily)
Arianespace reports that it has signed a contract with the global
satellite internet company OneWeb to design, qualify and supply 21
payload dispensers for the deployment of the OneWeb constellation,
along with five more on option. RUAG Space AB (Linkoping, Sweden) will
be the prime contractor, in charge of development and production of
these dispenser systems.
The dispenser systems will first secure the satellites during their
flight to low Earth orbit and then release them into space. They are
designed to accommodate up to 32 spacecraft per launch, allowing
Arianespace to deliver the lion's share of the OneWeb constellation
over a period of 18 months, starting in 2018. (5/24)
KBR Acquiring NASA Contractor Wyle
(Source: Space News)
NASA contractor Wyle is being acquired by Houston-based KBR Inc. KBR, a
construction and engineering firm well known for its oil industry work,
is paying $570 million for Wyle, a Top 25 NASA contractor that
currently holds the agency’s $1.5 billion space medicine contract. Wyle
also provides specialized engineering, scientific and technical
services to the U.S. Department of Defense and other government
agencies. (5/24)
Human Missions to Mars: Questions of
Who and When (Source: Space Review)
NASA has general plans to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, but that
schedule is not fast enough for some. Jeff Foust reports on a debate
among Mars exploration advocates on the schedule of such missions, and
the role the private sector can play. Click here.
(5/23)
Comparing India’s Reusable Launch
Vehicle with the Space Shuttle is Totally Out of Place (Source:
Space Review)
On Monday, the Indian space agency ISRO flew its first reusable launch
vehicle technology demonstrator vehicle on a brief suborbital flight.
Kiran Krishnan Nair argues that while the flight is a step forwards
towards an RLV, its importance has been overhyped, particularly in the
Indian media. Click here.
Editor's Note:
Here's
a photo comparison of the Indian RLV and the U.S. X-37 spaceplane.
(5/23)
Creating a Mission Control for the
Commercial Spaceflight Industry (Source: Space Review)
As more organizations get involved in human spaceflight, there will be
a greater need for facilities to monitor and control those missions.
Greg Anderson argues for the creation of a consolidated mission control
organization to meet that need. Click here.
(5/23)
How an ICBM-Based “Bridge to Nowhere”
Can Help Start a Moon Village (Source: Space Review)
In recent months, the launch industry has debated whether to revise
existing policy limiting the commercial use of retired ICBM motors.
Michael Turner offers an alternative use for those missiles that could
stimulate lunar development. Click here.
(5/23)
Ex-NASA Man to Plant One Billion Trees
a Year Using Drones (Source: Independent)
A drone start-up is going to counter industrial scale deforestation
using industrial scale reforestation. BioCarbon Engineering wants to
use drones for good, using the technology to seed up to one billion
trees a year, all without having to set foot on the ground.
26 billion trees are currently being burned down every year while only
15 billion are replanted. If successful, the initiative could help
address this shortfall in a big way. Drones should streamline
reforestation considerably, with hand-planting being slow and
expensive. "The only way we're going to take on these age-old problems
is with techniques that weren't available to us before," CEO and former
NASA-engineer Lauren Fletcher said. "By using this approach we can meet
the scale of the problem out there." (4/7)
Forget the Asteroid Mission and Go to
the Moon, Lawmakers Tell NASA (Source: Ars Technica)
On Tuesday, budget writers in the US House will make changes to a bill
that funds federal commerce, justice, and science agencies—which
includes NASA—for the coming fiscal year. But a draft of the full bill
released Monday contains a blockbuster for the space agency: the House
calls for a pivot away from NASA’s direct-to-Mars vision toward a
pathway that includes lunar landings first.
Since a space policy speech in 2010 by President Obama, the space
agency has been following a loosely defined plan to first send
astronauts to visit a fragment of an asteroid near the Moon and then
conduct other operations in the vicinity of the Moon before striking
off for Mars some time in the 2030s.
However a number of independent reports, such as the National Research
Council’s Pathways to Exploration, have questioned the viability and
sustainability of a direct-to-Mars plan. That panel called for NASA and
the White House to reconsider the Moon as an interim destination. Click
here.
(5/23)
Ancient Solar Superflare Suggests
Risks for Mars Missions (Source: Space.com)
When a powerful "superflare" from the sun scoured the solar system more
than 1,200 years ago, it apparently had little effect on Earth's
inhabitants — but today's astronauts wouldn't be so lucky, scientists
said. New research suggests that an event of that magnitude would
greatly endanger current plans for space travel, with astronauts
standing a good chance of receiving lethal doses of radiation.
Solar eruptions occur regularly, sometimes wreaking havoc on Earth. For
instance, in 1989, a powerful explosion from the sun hit the Earth's
magnetic field, triggering a geomagnetic storm that blacked out the
entire Canadian province of Quebec within 90 seconds, leaving 6 million
residents in the dark for 9 hours. (5/23)
Scientists Work on Plans to Defend
Earth from Killer Asteroids (Source: CBS)
Disaster movies from "Deep Impact" to "Asteroid" to "Armageddon" have
mined drama from the mortal threat humanity could face if a massive
asteroid were speeding towards Earth. At Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, scientists are taking that disaster scenario seriously and
working on a plan to prevent it.
To save mankind from a doomsday collision, planetary scientist Megan
Bruck Syal is working with small meteorites -- space rocks formed at
the dawn of the solar system that drifted through space for billions of
years before crashing into Earth. "Nobody has really looked at
meteorites in this way before, under these high-pressure conditions, so
we're doing something new and it's difficult in a lot of ways when you
do something new," Bruck said. (5/23)
Lawmaker Orders NASA to Plan Trip to
Alpha Centauri by 100th Anniversary of Moon Landing (Source:
Science)
It seems that the recently announced Breakthrough Starshot project—to
send a privately funded fleet of tiny spacecraft to a nearby star—may
have started a star rush. Today a senior U.S. lawmaker who helps write
NASA’s budget called on the agency to begin developing its own
interstellar probes, with the aim of launching a mission to Alpha
Centauri, our nearest star system, in 2069—the centenary of the Apollo
11 moon landing.
Representative John Culberson (R–TX), a self-professed space fan who
chairs the House of Representatives appropriations subpanel that
oversees NASA, included the call for the ambitious voyage in a
committee report released today. The report accompanies a bill setting
NASA’s budget for the 2017 fiscal year, which begins 1 October; the
full House appropriations panel is set to consider the bill on Tuesday.
In the report, Culberson’s panel “encourages NASA to study and develop
propulsion concepts that could enable an interstellar scientific probe
with the capability of achieving a cruise velocity of 0.1c [10% of the
speed of light].” The report language doesn’t mandate any additional
funding, but calls on NASA to draw up a technology assessment report
and conceptual road map within 1 year. (5/23)
Billionaire Technologist Accuses NASA
Asteroid Mission of Bad Statistics (Source: Science)
Nathan Myhrvold—ex–Microsoft billionaire, patent accumulator, dinosaur
geek, and noted molecular gastronomist—has a new obsession: asteroids.
The CEO of Bellevue, Washington–based Intellectual Ventures says that
scientists using a prominent NASA space telescope have made fundamental
mistakes in their assessment of the size of more than 157,000 asteroids
they have observed. (5/23)
The Center of Earth is Younger Than
the Outer Surface (Source: Science News)
Our home planet is young at heart. According to new calculations,
Earth’s center is more than two years younger than its surface. In
Einstein’s general theory of relativity, massive objects warp the
fabric of spacetime, creating a gravitational pull and slowing time
nearby. So a clock placed at Earth’s center will tick ever-so-slightly
slower than a clock at its surface.
Such time shifts are determined by the gravitational potential, a
measure of the amount of work it would take to move an object from one
place to another. Since climbing up from Earth’s center would be a
struggle against gravity, clocks down deep would run slow relative to
surface timepieces. (5/23)
Banning Russian Rocket Engines Will
Increase Costs And Risks (Source: Forbes)
How confusing is the legislative process on Capitol Hill? Try this:
Last week the House of Representatives cut the President’s emergency
funding request for fighting the Zika virus by two-thirds to save
money; this week the Senate will debate whether to waste all the money
that was saved by forcing the Pentagon to use over-priced rockets when
it launches satellites.
Senator McCain, who is pushing a ban on the use of Russian engines in
U.S. launch vehicles, says the government should rely on American
technology. But there’s a problem with that approach. One
of the U.S. launch providers — SpaceX — can’t reach half of the orbits
the military needs to get to, and the other would cost 35-40% more per
launch if it can’t use rockets with Russian engines.
The added cost for launches would be over $2 billion, which is more
than the White House’s entire request to combat Zika virus. And
what would we get for spending the extra money? Nothing
good. Here are four ways banning Russian engines would make life
harder for warfighters and taxpayers. (5/23)
Iridium Launches Breakthrough
Alternative Global Positioning Service (Source: Iridium)
Iridium Communications announced the official launch of Satellite Time
and Location (STL), an alternative or companion to traditional
location-based technologies, and declared it ready for use. For the
first time, end users now have access to accurate and resilient
position, navigation and timing (PNT) technology that works anywhere on
the planet, even indoors.
Due to the unique architecture of its 66 cross-linked, low-earth orbit
satellite constellation, Iridium is the only network that has the
global coverage and reliability needed to deliver this highly unique,
robust and cost-effective solution to the market.
STL can protect, toughen and augment traditional GPS technology by
providing a position or timing source when GPS signals are degraded or
unavailable. It can also provide an alternative source of time to check
the integrity of a GPS signal. This is essential for any kind of
critical infrastructure that depends on GPS as a source of PNT
information. (5/23)
NASA Extends Harris’ Space
Communications Network Support Contract (Source: GovConWire)
NASA has exercised two one-year options on a previously awarded
contract to Harris (NYSE: HRS) for communications, telemetry and
tracking support to the International Space Station and various
satellites in low-Earth orbit.
The options increase the ceiling value of the company’s Space
Communications Network Services contract with NASA by about $384
million, Harris said Monday. Harris booked the additional contract
funds in the third quarter of its 2016 fiscal year. The company has
supported the communications network of the orbiting ISS, Hubble Space
Telescope and Earth Observing System satellites through the SCNS
program. (5/23)
Siberian Scientists Create Station
Allowing Humans to Live on Mars (Source: Sputnik)
Siberian scientists create a revolutionary BIOS-3 system that is a
self-sustaining ‘micro-Earth’ which may make it possible for humans to
create oxygen, water and food in hostile environments, for example on
Mars. The BIOS-3, or the Biological Support System, is an experiment
which was started in the early 1960s.
In 1972-1973 two men and a woman participated in the experiment, they
were an agronomist, an engineer and a doctor. They spent six months at
the BIOS-3 saying that the system was able to provide 100 percent of
the needed oxygen, and from 50 to 80 percent of the food at different
stages of the experiment.
The BIOS-3 was completely self-sufficient as it was about 315 cubic
meters, divided into four spaces linked by hermetically sealed doors.
There was a common space with a kitchen and a bathroom where people
could have some rest, talk to their colleagues, monitor how the system
operates. The other two compartments had plants: wheat, oilseeds and
vegetables, providing a balanced diet for the ‘bionauts’. (5/23)
Chinese Startups and Venture
Capitalists Look to Space (Source: South China Morning Post)
Space is a frontier that could soon fall to privately funded Chinese
start-ups looking for commercial opportunities created by the sky-high
costs of the state-run space programme, which one expert describes as
“probably the most expensive in the world”. Visitors to the simple but
sleek website of Beijing-based One Space Technology are greeted with
the slogan “We create space express”.
With its first commercial rocket launch scheduled for 2018, the private
aerospace company has vowed to become China’s version of US rocket
launch firm SpaceX, with a low-cost launch vehicle that would “make a
space journey as convenient as hailing a cab”.
A key investor in One Space was Legend Holdings, the mother company of
Lenovo, the world’s largest personal computer maker, which owns a
substantial but unspecified share of the company through its venture
capital fund Legend Star. (5/23)
Kona Spaceport Certification Still
Being Pursued (Source: Hawaii Tribune-Herald)
For several years, a small office in the state’s Department of
Business, Economic Development and Tourism has been pursuing a
spaceport certification for Kona International Airport, which would
make it one of the few hubs for proposed commercial flights into
suborbit.
While the idea still isn’t ready for launch, Jim Crisafulli, state
Office of Aerospace Development director, said an environmental
assessment required for the Federal Aviation Administration
certification remains in the works. He estimates a public meeting
regarding its findings could be held this summer, perhaps by late July
or early August. Crisafulli previously estimated the review would be
done around the start of the year, but additional questions from the
FAA extended the time-frame.
“The FAA is trying to be as thorough as possible,” he said. “We’ve now
been through eight drafts of this environmental assessment.” Space
tourism itself remains an idea. But Hawaii’s position as a major
tourist destination makes it a good candidate for this emerging
industry, assuming it takes off, Crisafulli said. (5/23)
Dark Energy Might be the Reason Time
Runs Forward (Source: Futurism)
A new study may have found a link between dark energy and the Second
Law of Thermodynamics—suggesting that the very expansion of the
universe may impart a direction to time. Click here.
(5/23)
FAA AST Budget: A Million Here, A
Million There (Source: Parabolic Arc)
The House Appropriations Committee has recommended $18.826 million for
the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA AST) for FY
2017, which is $1 million below the Obama Administration’s budget
request. The amount is $1 million above the enacted level for FY 2016.
In a separate account, FAA AST would receive $2 million for research
and development efforts into commercial space transportation safety.
The Obama Administration has requested $2.953 million.
“The recommended funding level will allow the Office of Commercial
Space Transportation to add operational personnel to support an
increased level of activity in its licensing, permitting and safety
inspection functions,” the committee said in draft bill to be marked up
on Tuesday. “The Committee notes that the budget request includes a 20%
growth in personnel in this office above the fiscal year 2016 personnel
level. The Committee believes that the office should be able to
judiciously hire critical operational staff within the amounts
provided,” the measure states. (5/23)
ThumbSat Opens SmallSat Factory in
Tijuana Mexico (Source: Via Satellite)
Experimental satellite manufacturer ThumbSat has opened a factory in
Tijuana, Mexico for the production of small satellites and their
associated components. The facility is fully operational and capable of
producing circuit boards for satellites, electronic subsystems such as
radio transmission boards, and customer specific payloads, including
the new ThumbNet dongles, which will be one of the most advanced
Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers available anywhere in the world,
according to the company.
The facility includes a clean room housing all of the equipment
required to manufacture and assemble ThumbNet tracking stations and
ThumbSat satellites as well as perform all of the required testing to
ensure the satellites are ready for launch into space. Testing
capabilities of the laboratory eventually will include hot and cold
thermal cycling, three axis random and sine wave vibration, vacuum, and
complete electrical and operational verification. (5/23)
No comments:
Post a Comment