June 29 News Items

Wallops May Gain $14 Million in Senate Appropriations Bill (Source: Spaceports Blog)
Senate Appropriations Committee version for NASA funding in FY 09 includes $14-million for new launch pad infrastructure improvements at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility. The chances are excellent for approval on the Senate floor before referral to the House. The federal proposal comes on the heels of the Virginia General Assembly approval last April of $16 million in bonds for space launch infrastructure improvements along with the decision by Orbital Sciences Corporation to utilize the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport as the Taurus-2 launch site to orbit and resupply the International Space Station. (6/29)

Florida Ranks 37 on New Technology & Science Index (Source: Milken Institute)
The Milken Institute, a public nonpartisan think tank, released their 2008 State Technology & Science Index. The Index looks at human capital investment, research & development inputs, risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure, technology & science workforce, and technology concentration & dynamism. Florida is ranked 37, down from previous years. Users can read the full report online and also take advantage of their interactive website, which allows you to view specific states and their rankings since 2002 in each category. Find more at http://www.milkeninstitute.org/tech/. (6/28)

California Ranks Fourth on New Technology & Science Index (Source: Milken Institute)
The Milken Institute, a public nonpartisan think tank, released their 2008 State Technology & Science Index. The Index looks at human capital investment, research & development inputs, risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure, technology & science workforce, and technology concentration & dynamism. California is ranked 4. Users can read the full report online and also take advantage of their interactive website, which allows you to view specific states and their rankings since 2002 in each category. Find more at http://www.milkeninstitute.org/tech/. (6/28)

Rides on Soyuz are Rocky, But Not Risky (Source: Florida Today)
The crew of the International Space Station will get a go-ahead next week to perform spacewalking inspections as part of a probe into back-to-back ballistic re-entries by Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Two veteran cosmonauts, meanwhile, say the type of steep trajectories flown by consecutive Soyuz crews are safe-but-rocky rides back to Earth.

"Imagine you drive a luxury car with fine shock absorbers, not feeling the road at all," said Pavel Vinogradov, who served on Russia's Mir space station and commanded an expedition to the new outpost. "And then suddenly, one of the shock absorbers breaks and you start feeling all the dents and unevenness of the road," he said. "It doesn't mean that your life is in danger. You can still safely drive the car." (6/29)

U.S. May Fall Behind in Space Race, Buzz Aldrin Warns (Source: AFP)
Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, warned in an interview that the United States risked falling behind Russia and China in the space race if it did not redouble its efforts. Aldrin urged U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama to "retain the vision for space exploration" and said he would lobby both to ensure they increased funding for NASA. "If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century," Aldrin was quoted as saying by the weekly.

"All the Chinese have to do is fly around the moon and back, and they'll appear to have won the return to the moon with humans. They could put one person on the surface of the moon for one day and he'd be a national hero." Aldrin warned, as well, that Russia could adapt and enlarge its Soyuz system to better accommodate space tourists, taking the lead there.

"Globalization means many other countries are asserting themselves and trying to take over leadership," he said. "Please don't ask Americans to let others assume the leadership of human exploration." He said he was trying to "assemble the best advice to two new candidates who are approaching election" and added that he wanted to get "in there and talk to them because it's [space exploration] so important." (6/29)

Agitation Over ISRO Land Takeover (Source: India PR Wire)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) seems to have hit another roadblock over its proposed education center in Kerala with farmers whose land at Valiyamala near here has been acquired for the center threatening an agitation if the government doesn't pay them adequate compensation. Representatives of the farmers' families said the compensation given to them for 50 acres of their agricultural land for the proposed institute was meager. The families threatened that apart from launching an agitation they would also seek legal help to tide over this issue. (6/29)

Spy Satellite Procurement Approved (Source: Space News)
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England approved a plan June 12 under which the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) will procure at least one satellite to satisfy the national security community's growing need for broad-area, medium-resolution imagery, according to a Pentagon official. The NRO will buy as many as two satellites under the Broad Area Surveillance Intelligence Capability (BASIC) program.

The government plans to maintain and even broaden its relationship with the commercial providers through purchases of more sophisticated imagery — some of which may be classified — for targeting and broad-area surveillance. The government also is considering a new contracting vehicle under which it would have more-direct tasking authority over commercial satellites than currently is the case. In addition, the government eventually could decide to sell the BASIC satellite to one of the imagery companies to operate. (6/29)

Kourou Spaceport Debut of Soyuz, Vega Rockets Delayed (Source: Space News)
The inaugural launches of two new vehicles being introduced at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana — Russia's Soyuz and the Italian-led Vega — have been delayed until the second half of 2009. Delays in the shipment of Russian hardware, which in turn have postponed the arrival of some 200 Russian launch-installation specialists, are the main reasons behind the slip in the inaugural-flight date of the Europeanized Soyuz rocket. The all-new Vega rocket, designed to launch small Earth observation and science payloads into low Earth orbit, has been slowed by a series of setbacks. (6/29)

ULA Has No Plans to Cede Medium-Lift Market (Source: Space News)
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has enough unsold Delta 2 rockets in inventory to meet NASA's forecasted demand through at least 2015 and could wait until 2012 to decide whether to restart production of the reliable but increasingly expensive workhorse. The company is considering ways to reduce the Delta 2's price tag as well as developing a less powerful, lower-cost variant of its larger Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rockets. ULA has no intention of ceding the medium-lift launch market it has dominated for decades to new rockets being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. and SpaceX. (6/29)

Half of Galileo Users Expected to be Military (Source: Space News)
Half of all users of the encrypted signal to be included in Europe's future Galileo satellite navigation system likely will be military customers, with the other half made up of law enforcement agencies and emergency response services, according to a European Commission survey. The survey also found that more than two-thirds of the prospective users of Galileo's Public Regulated Service (PRS) either have or expect to have access to the military code of the U.S. GPS network. (6/29)

DIA To Experiment With Cosmo Skymed Imagery (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) plans to award a sole-source contract to e-GEOS to purchase or lease processing equipment, licenses and integration services for data from Italy's Cosmo-Skymed radar satellite constellation. The processing equipment will be integrated into the Center for Southeast Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing in Miami, where it will be used to receive and process data from the satellites on an almost instantaneous basis as part of "Foreign Comparative Testing." (6/29)