Generation Orbit Wins Phase II SBIR for Air-Launch Development (Source:
GO)
Generation Orbit has won a Phase II SBIR (Small Business Innovative
Research) contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory for
development and flight testing of the GOLauncher 1 (GO1). The single
stage liquid rocket, launched from a Gulfstream III business jet, will
conduct its inaugural flight test in 2019, reaching Mach 6 within the
atmosphere. The flight will mark the initial operational capability of
the world's first commercially-available hypersonic test bed,
empowering hypersonic researchers with affordable and flexible access
to hypersonic flight environments.
This effort is a follow-on of the Phase I and Phase II SBIR Contracts
awarded to Generation Orbit by AFRL in July of 2014 and August of 2015,
respectively. Editor's
Note: GO ultimately plans to air-launch microsatellites to
orbit, from Jacksonville's Cecil Spaceport. (4/6)
America's Space
Commanders Rattle Their Lightsabers (Source: The Atlantic)
"In no uncertain terms, space is a war fighting domain, not because we
want it to be but because adversaries are threatening peaceful use." So
says an April 4 tweet from USAF Space Command. And last week, Navy Vice
Admiral Charles Richard, the deputy commander of U.S. Strategic
Command, said during a conference in Washington, D.C., that “while
we’re not at war in space, I don’t think we can say we’re exactly at
peace, either.”
If war breaks out, it will be fought amongst the hundreds of
communications, weather, navigation, and reconnaissance satellites
circling Earth. Satellites can be destroyed by ground-based missiles,
disabled by lasers, hacked by actors on Earth to knock out
transmissions, or stalked and beaten up by spacecraft designed to hunt
enemy hardware.
There are currently about 1,400 operational satellites orbiting the
planet at various altitudes, according to a database maintained by the
Union of Concerned Scientists, an American nonprofit group. The U.S.
dominates the field with nearly 576 satellites, compared to Russia’s
140 and China’s 181. The U.S. has an edge, but having more assets can
mean more vulnerabilities. (4/5)
Russia Opens 1st Ground
Station to Monitor Orbital Debris in Brazil (Source:
Space Daily)
Russia's first ground station of the Automated Warning System on
Hazardous Situations in Outer Space (ASPOS OKP) aimed at monitoring
orbital debris was opened in Brazil, a spokesman of the Roscosmos state
corporation said. "The main goal of the ASPOS OKP is to monitor
dangerous approaches of the devices operating on orbit with orbital
debris and to follow falling satellites... The facility is located at
the Pico dos Dias Observatory [in Brazil's western Minas Gerais
state]," the spokesman said. He added that the Brazilian facility was
the first of the four specialized centers being created by Roscosmos
for the needs of the ASPOS OKP. (4/5)
Lunar Missions Gaining
Popularity Among Space Powers (Source: Space News)
Leaders of a number of space agencies made the case for going to the
moon before heading to Mars. In a panel session at Space Symposium
Tuesday, the heads of several national space agencies said they were
interested in missions to the moon, including establishing a base or
"Moon Village" there, before sending humans to Mars. NASA's current
plans call for missions in cislunar space, but not the lunar surface.
NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said those plans do support
"work with our international partners on what we do on the surface of
the moon." (4/5)
China Describes Lunar
Ambitions at Colorado Symposium (Source: Space News)
The head of China's space agency laid out bold ambitions for his space
program Wednesday. In a speech at Space Symposium, Yulong Tian said
China has a number of lunar and Mars missions planned, including a
lunar sample return mission, Chang'e-5, scheduled to launch in
November. China's long-term robotic exploration plans also include
missions to Jupiter, asteroids and Venus. (4/5)
Japan Plans Launch of
Three Satellites to Augment GPS (Source: Asahi Shimbun)
Japan is planning to launch three satellites in the next year to
augment satellite navigation services. The Japanese space agency JAXA
showed off Wednesday one of the Michibiki satellites it plans to launch
during the 2017 fiscal year for the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System. The
satellites, in inclined geosynchronous orbits, improve the GPS system
in urban areas and elsewhere where obstacles, like tall buildings, can
block the basic GPS signals. The first Michibiki satellite launched in
2010. (4/5)
Blue Origin Ready to
Support NASA Lunar Missions with Blue Moon (Source: Space
News)
If NASA’s human spaceflight program is redirected back to the Moon,
Blue Origin is ready to support it with its proposed “Blue Moon” lunar
lander system, said company president Robert Meyerson. Blue Moon can
“cost effectively soft-land large amounts of mass onto the lunar
surface,” Meyerson said at the 33rd Space Symposium here, his first
public comments about the system since its existence was first reported
in March by the Washington Post. “Any credible first lunar settlement
is going to require such a capability.” (4/6)
NASA Funds Ideas from
Science Fiction (Source: GeekWire)
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, also known as NIAC, has
been backing far-out aerospace concepts for almost 20 years. It started
out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, modeled after the
Pentagon’s DARPA think tank. NIAC’s latest crop of 22 tech projects was
announced this week, and they include a few concepts that were
virtually ripped from the headlines of science fiction’s pulp
magazines. Click here.
(4/6)
How Being Deaf Made the
Difference in Space Research (Source: Air & Space)
In the late 1950s, researchers faced many unknowns about the effects of
space travel on the human body. How would motion sickness impact the
ability of astronauts to function and survive? To better understand and
manage potential dangers, they looked to the deaf community. The U.S.
Naval School of Aviation Medicine and the newly formed NASA recruited
deaf people for weightlessness, balance, and motion sickness
experiments. Researchers selected test subjects that met specific
criteria.
All but one of the selected test subjects became deaf from spinal
meningitis, which impacted their inner ear physiology. This meant they
could endure motion and gravitational forces that make most people
nauseous. The ability to withstand intense movement turned the
so-called “labyrinthine defect” into a valuable research asset—no
matter the test of equilibrium, the deaf participants simply never got
sick. Click here.
(4/7)
Hawaiian Company Making
Windows for Commercial Spacecraft (Source: Bloomberg)
Big windows like those envisioned for Blue Origin’s capsule add cost
and complexity to designing spacecraft because larger glass panes have
to be thicker, adding weight to a vehicle that needs to be as light as
possible, said Bill Goodman, vice president of space systems at HNu
Photonics of Kahului, HI. A 22-inch diameter window on the
International Space Station is about 3 1/2 inches thick, made from
layers designed to withstand collisions with fast-moving dust
particles, maintain air pressure within the capsule and a final layer
that improves visibility through the thick window, he said. Despite the
high cost, big windows will be a good marketing ploy for space tourism,
Goodman said. (4/5)
Blue Origin Still
Planning Commercial Suborbital Flights in 2018 (Source:
Space News)
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said April 5 that his company was still
hoping to start flying people on suborbital space tourism flights by
the end of next year, while suggesting crewed test flights will not
start this year as previously planned. Bezos backed away from earlier
statements that called for flying people on test flights later this
year. “We’re going to go through the test program, and we’ll put humans
on it when we’re happy,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be 2017
at this point. It could be.” (4/5)
Orbital ATK Confident in
Prospects for Large Launch Vehicle (Source: Space News)
Orbital ATK says it is well positioned to win a U.S. Air Force
competition early next year to support continued development of a new
large launch vehicle to serve government and commercial users. The
company announced April 3 that it was making progress on what it calls
the Next Generation Launch (NGL) program, on which the company and the
Air Force have spent a combined $200 million to date through awards
made as part of an effort to develop a replacement for United Launch
Alliance’s workhorse Atlas 5 rocket.
Mike Laidley, vice president of the NGL program at Orbital ATK, said
the next major milestone for the program is the release this summer of
a request for proposals from the Air Force Space and Missile Systems
Center (SMC) on the next phase of that effort, called the Launch
Service Agreement (LSA). The Air Force plans to make up to three LSA
awards in early 2018 to complete prototype vehicle development,
including certification test flights.
The NGL vehicle uses a combination of solid- and liquid-propellant
stages. The lower two stages are solid motors, based in part on solid
rocket motors the company built for the space shuttle and NASA’s Space
Launch System heavy-lift rocket. Editor's Note: The new Orbital ATK
rocket would share a launch pad (LC-39B) with NASA's heavy-lift SLS
rocket at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. Virginia spaceport planners
(and some NASA officials) had high hopes not long ago that larger
vehicles like this one would one day be able to operate at Wallops
Island. (4/6)
Goldman Sachs:
Space-Mining for Platinum is 'More Realistic Than Perceived'
(Source: Business Insider)
Goldman Sachs is bullish on space mining with "asteroid-grabbing
spacecraft." In a 98-page note for clients seen by Business Insider,
analyst Noah Poponak and his team argue that platinum mining in space
is getting cheaper and easier, and the rewards are becoming greater as
time goes by.
"While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the
actual financial and technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting
probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and
Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost
$2.6bn," the report says.
$2.6 billion (£2 billion) sounds like a lot, but it is only about
one-third the amount that has been invested in Uber, putting the price
well within reach of today's VC funds. It is also a comparable to the
setup cost for a regular earthbound mine. (An MIT paper estimates a new
rare earth metal mine can cost up to $1 billion, from scratch.) (4/5)
Dream Chaser to Use
Europe’s Next-Generation Docking System (Source: Parabolic
Arc)
ESA and a team of European industrial contractors led by QinetiQ have
finalised an agreement with Sierra Nevada Corp. for the use of Europe’s
International Berthing Docking Mechanism on the Dream Chaser
spaceplane. Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser is being developed as a
reusable, lifting-body, multi-mission spacecraft capable of landing at
commercial airports or spaceports that can accommodate large commercial
aircraft anywhere in the world. (4/6)
Changes Set for Spaceport
America Tours (Source: Parabolic Arc)
Follow the Sun Tours was running tours of the spaceport from the
visitors center in Truth or Consequences. Tourists signed up online or
arrived in person. The company also brings in tour groups on coaches
from Albuquerque and El Paso.
Follow the Sun Tours will continue to bus in tourists from Albuquerque.
The spaceport authority has lined up a new tour company to handle the
tours from the visitors center in Truth or Consequences. An
announcement will be made soon about the new tour company and an
upgraded visitor experience. (4/4)
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