August 6 News Items

Florida High Schoolers Help NASA in "Governor's School" Pilot Project (Sources: NASA, ERAU)
High school students from 35 Florida schools recently experienced what it might be like to land a rocket on the moon or excavate the lunar surface. During two, one-week sessions this summer, eager students worked alongside NASA mentors at Kennedy Space Center to participate in a Governor's School pilot program for the gifted. The program was sponsored by three universities--Florida Tech, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and Florida State University--as part of a larger state-funded planning effort for a proposed "Governor's School for Space Science and Technology."

Space Florida, NASA and Delaware North Park Services supported the pilot project, which assessed the level of interest among the state's gifted students, mechanisms for collaboration with NASA and other partners, and outreach methods to garner statewide student participation. The proposed school, if approved by the state, would be located in the vicinity of KSC.

Dr. Lesley Garner, the pre-college officer in NASA's Education Office at Kennedy, coordinated NASA's portion of the pilot program. Garner hopes the students will have a greater understanding of academic majors they can pursue in science, technology, engineering and mathematics for careers they didn't know existed. Click here to view the NASA news release and list of participating students. (8/5)

SpaceX Traces Third Rocket Failure to Timing Error (Source: Space.com)
A timing error that caused two segments of a privately built Falcon 1 rocket to collide after liftoff doomed the booster's third flight. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his engineers have traced the cause of the Aug. 2 launch failure to a timing error between the shutdown of the low-cost Falcon 1 rocket's first stage engine and the separation of its upper stage, leading the two segments to bump into one another instead of separating harmlessly. The timing error was on the order of seconds. "If we were to increase that gap by even a second or two, this problem would not have arisen," said Elon Musk.

Musk said SpaceX would be releasing video of the staging event that clearly shows that the first and second stages separated as planned about 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight, but that unanticipated residual thrust from the redesigned Merlin engine caused the first stage to bump the second stage just as it began to fire. (8/6)

Soyuz Glitch Remains a Mystery: NASA Chief (Source: AFP)
Russian engineers have yet to discover what has caused the Soyuz capsule to experience troublesome descents in its last two trips back to Earth carrying astronauts. "The problem is that with all the great minds that focus on the issue, none can figure out what the problem is," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said. "We don't know when we will know. Smart people are working on it," he said. After leaving the International Space Station on April 19, the Russian capsule went off track, landing 420 kilometers (261 miles) from its target in the steppes of Kazakhstan. (8/6)

Invisible Clumps in the Galaxy (Source: Science News)
Clumps of invisible “dark matter” lurk in the same galactic neighborhood as the solar system, a powerful new computer simulation shows. The finding, reported in the Aug. 7 Nature, could help scientists determine what the unseen material is made of. Surrounding every galaxy is a halo of mysterious dark matter that can only be detected through its gravitational tug on stars and galaxies. This invisible halo is more spherical and much larger than the visible galaxy it encapsulates. Past computer simulations suggested that relatively dense concentrations of dark matter would form in gravitationally bound “subhalos” within the galactic halo. But in those simulations, subhalos did not show up in the inner regions of a galaxy. (8/6)

Jupiter and Saturn Full of Liquid Metal Helium (Source: UC Berkeley)
A strange, metal brew lies buried deep within Jupiter and Saturn, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and in London. The study demonstrates that metallic helium is less rare than was previously thought and is produced under the kinds of conditions present at the centers of giant, gaseous planets, mixing with metal hydrogen and forming a liquid metal alloy. (8/6)

Chandrayaan Launch Delayed (Source: The Hindu)
The launch of Chandrayaan, India’s moon mission project, will be delayed past the scheduled date of September 18 to mid-October, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair said. He said that the systems had already been fully integrated and that thermo-vacuum tests would be conducted soon. The launch would be possible about 45 to 60 days after that. Alignments were the key to a successful launch along with climate conditions. Only about three days each month would provide favourable alignments, he said. (8/6)

Spaceflight Training Company Wins 'Vision to Reality' Award (Source: CNN)
Environmental Tectonics Corp.'s National AeroSpace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center was honored with an award from the Space Frontier Foundation. The "Vision to Reality" Award was presented to the NASTAR Center for their success in creating their Space Training programs, both for Virgin Galactic’s ’Future Astronaut’ trainees, and for NASTAR Center’s Air and Space Adventure Program Training courses available for any and all space enthusiasts who wish to sign up for a realistic Space launch experience. "The NASTAR Center continues to develop and implement unique space training programs to provide authentic space flight training for space travelers and those who wish to fly into space." (8/6)

Yahsat Raises $1.2 billion for Two-Satellite Program (Source: Space News)
Al Yah Satellite Communications Co. (Yahsat) has secured commitments for $1.2 billion, mainly in bank loans, to finance its two-satellite civil-military telecommunications system, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates-based Yahsat announced Aug. 6. (8/6)

NASA Orion Parachute Test Vehicle Fails Drop Test (Source: NASA Watch)
"All but one of the 18 parachutes inflated. Although all other parts of the test and the system itself performed as intended, the parachute responsible for getting the mockup to the correct test conditions - called a programmer chute - did not inflate during the test. As a result, the test failed. The engineering team will be studying the hardware and the parachutes, as well as analyzing computer models and imagery, to determine what caused the problem." (8/6)

Russian Launch of Satellite on Converted 'Satan' ICBM Postponed (Source: RIA Novosti)
The launch of a converted RS-20 Voyevoda intercontinental ballistic missile to put a Thai earth observation satellite in orbit has been postponed. The launch, from a silo in the southern Urals, had been scheduled for August 6 under a contract with Kosmotras, a Russian-Ukrainian joint venture that acquires RS-20 (SS-18 Satan) intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) scrapped by Russia's Strategic Missile Forces and converts them into Dnepr launch vehicles. (8/6)

Iridium Announces Q2 2008 Results (Source: Iridium)
Iridium Satellite LLC its fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit increases for all the important metrics -- revenue, earnings and subscriber gains. Total revenue in the second quarter 2008 was $81.7 million versus $66.7 million in the same quarter last year, a 22 percent increase. For the six-month period that ended June 30, 2008, Iridium posted $156 million in revenue, a 31 percent increase over the first half of 2007. (8/6)