June 11 News Items

Israel Launches Spy Satellite (Source: SpaceToday.net)
Israel launched a small reconnaissance satellite on its own Shavit booster early Monday. The Shavit booster lifted off from the Palmachim Air Force Base in Israel and placed the Ofeq-7 satellite into low Earth orbit. The 300-kilogram satellite is designed to provide high-resolution imagery for the Israeli military (with Iran believed to be a priority imaging target). Ofeq-7 will replace the aging Ofeq-5 satellite, which has been operating for about five years. This was the first Israeli launch since a September 2004 failure of a Shavit carrying the Ofeq-6 satellite. The rocket was launched in a rare "retrograde" orbit, heading west over the Mediterranian.

NASA Funds Florida Tech Professor for Extragalactic Research (Source: FIT)
Eric Perlman, Florida Tech associate professor of physics and space sciences, has earned $490,400 in funding over three years from NASA’s Long-term Space Astrophysics grant program. Perlman will conduct observational and theoretical work on jets, which are energetic outflows from the centers of some bright galaxies. They emerge typically from the regions immediately surrounding the central black hole, with a velocity nearly equal to the speed of light.

Satellite-Based Air Traffic Control Touted as Safer, More Efficient (Source: AIA)
UPS is pioneering a GPS-based navigation system for its aircraft in Louisville in an effort to safely land more airplanes per hour and prevent delays. Their system is similar to the Federal Aviation Administration's planned overhaul of the nation's aging air traffic control system. Advocates say the proposed modernization will improve efficiency and increase safety.

Russia Gradually Losing Ground in Space Exploration - Expert (Source: Interfax)
With each passing year Russia is ceding its positions in space exploration, says the head of a Russian space research center. "Russia has stopped space studies involving its space stations. Today foreign spacecraft carry Russian equipment or Russia helps to launch foreign scientific satellites," he said at a Moscow seminar. "The Russian programs of missions in terrestrial space are ineffective," Chernayvsky said. "Russia has developed mainly into a taxi driver for launching foreign spacecraft and taking space tourists into orbit," he said.

UK and Netherlands Against Public Funding for Galileo (Source: Spiegel)
Those pesky pan-European aerospace projects just never seem to go smoothly. First Airbus ran into all kinds of turbulence. Now Galileo -- planned as a competitor to the US GPS system -- appears to be in danger of crashing and burning. The European Union's planned satellite navigation system Galileo is in trouble. Although an agreement seemed to be reached Friday on bailing the project out with public money -- now the UK and the Netherlands are arguing against that.

According to a Germany media report, the two countries have rejected financing the beleagured project with public money -- contradicting what had appeared to be a consensus reached at a meeting of European Union transport ministers Friday. The two countries said they believed that financing the project with public money would "probably increase long-term costs instead of reducing them." Both countries argued that a public-private partnership is the best approach for such large infrastructure projects.

NASA Open to ISS Use by Industry, U.S. (Source: Space News)
NASA is ready and willing to share the Space Station with other U.S. government agencies and commercial firms once construction of the $100 billion orbital outpost is finished in 2010. That is the main thrust of a 14-page report NASA sent to Congress in late May outlining a plan for operating the U.S. segment of ISS as a "national laboratory" supported and used by entities other than NASA. Congress officially designated the U.S. side of the space station a national lab over a year ago with passage of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The bill directed NASA to seek new users for the space station and come back within a year with a plan describing how the national lab would be operated.

Will U.S. ‘Responsive Space’ Concept Go Global? (Source: Defense News)
Pentagon officials are pushing for approval to begin signing up NATO members to help develop and build a new generation of rapidly deployable satellites and rockets, a concept modeled after the “1,000-ship Navy” concept. Just as U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, envisions a global fleet of allied ships acting in close coordination, Pentagon space officials are pushing to bring some trans-Atlantic allies on board its Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) concept.

The end result could be a “100-satellite constellation,” says Air Force Col. Tom Doyne. ORS envisions small, tactical satellites available for launch on short notice — weeks or months — for communications, surveillance or other military needs. Officials say the smaller orbiters likely would cost between $20 million and $40 million each, hundreds of millions of dollars cheaper than larger, more advanced assets. Doyne and his team are proposing that many — perhaps all — of NATO’s 26 members fund ORS assets and drive costs down by buying five satellites at a time.

How the Space Race has Become a Truly International Affair (Source: Daily Record)
The world's superpowers have always dominated the space race. But with companies and agencies all rushing to attract tourists and commercial passengers to the heavens, Europe and Britain are now leading the way. While it may have been the astronauts and cosmonauts of the US and Russia that usually made the headlines, the last 50 years of space travel would not have been possible if it wasn't for the hard work and creativity of British and European scientists and pioneers.

The European firm EADS Astrium is reported to be on the verge of announcing plans for a reusable and commercially viable spaceship for tourists, and combined with Sir Richard Branson's proposed Virgin Galactic flights, this shows that our continent is home to the most exciting developments in the next generation of the space race.

NASA Lab Puts Ohio on Edge of Space (Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)
It's cool, quiet and dim inside the world's largest vacuum chamber. As serene as it is now, though, the Space Power Facility at NASA's Plum Brook Station will soon erupt in a blaze of activity intended to propel Ohio to the forefront of spacecraft testing. Over the next five years, workers will install $57 million of new facilities and equipment in and around the huge vacuum chamber. The exotic equipment will generate forces of biblical proportion: titanic blasts of sound; earthquake-like shaking; the hellish heat, icy cold and air- lessness of deep space. First to undergo launch- and space-environment simulation testing at Plum Brook will be Orion.

Managers Leaning Toward Spacewalk Repair of Blanket (Source: SpaceFlightNow.com)
Concern about possible re-entry heat damage to the underlying structure of the shuttle Atlantis' left-side maneuvering rocket pod under a pulled-up insulation blanket may prompt a simple spacewalk repair job, the chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team said today. Engineers studying the protruding triangular 4-inch by 6-inch blanket are concerned about the possible effects of re-entry heating on the graphite epoxy honeycomb structure of the shuttle's left Orbital Maneuvering System pod.

Shuttles have safely returned to Earth on several occasions with broken or lost tiles and lost blankets on the OMS pods. But in some cases, the underlying structure was damaged and required repairs. "The simplest is we would just tuck that blanket back down and fill that cavity back up. And they're talking about different ways to maybe secure it."