September 28 News Items

SpaceX Rocket Successfully Launched from South Pacific (Source: AP)
An Internet entrepreneur's latest effort to make space launch more affordable paid off Sunday when his commercial rocket carrying a dummy payload was lofted into orbit. It was the fourth attempt by Hawthorne-based SpaceX to launch its two-stage Falcon 1 rocket into orbit. "Fourth time's a charm," said Elon Musk, the multimillionaire who started up SpaceX. The rocket carried a 364-pound dummy payload designed and built by SpaceX for the launch. Musk pledged to continue getting rockets into orbit, saying the company has resolved design issues that plagued previous attempts. (9/28)

Shenzhou 7 Returns to Earth (Source: SpaceToday.net)
China's third human spaceflight mission came to a successful conclusion Sunday when the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft safely landed in northern China. The Shenzhou 7 reentry capsule, carrying three astronauts, landed in Inner Mongolia. The three crewmembers, Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng, emerged from the capsule about 45 minutes later and were reported to be in good health. The landing ended a 68-hour mission highlighted by China's first EVA, a 15-minute spacewalk by Zhai. The Chinese government has not released formal plans for its next manned mission, but the next two Shenzhou missions are expected to be unmanned flights to test rendezvous and docking technology, and perhaps also create a rudimentary space lab for the next piloted mission. (9/28)

Gov. Richardson to Speak in Alamogordo Monday on Spaceport (Source: Alamogordo Daily News)
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will be in Alamogordo Monday afternoon to address a town hall meeting about Spaceport America. Spaceport America is a proposed launch site for commercial space vehicles in southern Sierra County with construction to be completed in late 2010. Doña Ana and Sierra counties have already approved a one quarter of 1 percent gross receipts tax to help fund construction and will start collecting the tax in January. Otero County voters will decide in the Nov. 10 general election whether or not to approve a county tax and join Sierra and Doña Ana counties as part of spaceport district. (9/28)

New Mexico Lavatubes Could Launch Future Extraterrestrial Exploration (Source: The New Mexican)
Standing high above the lumpy black lava flows of El Malpais, planetary scientist Larry Crumpler can't help seeing similarities to Mars. El Malpais is saturated with caves, called lavatubes, built from a few million to tens of thousands of years ago when hot magma shot through other rock and left empty pathways behind. There's strong evidence that such caves also exist on the moon and on Mars, and studying them here can tell us a lot about the environments on other worlds.

In the 1960s, Apollo astronauts used to train in New Mexico because areas of the state mimic the dry, rocky settings on the moon and Mars. And one day in the not so distant future, astronauts could very well train here again and use the caves to learn how to build lavatube habitats on other worlds. "You can use these caves as ready-made habitat — you just seal off the ends and make it pretty, and you're shielded from solar radiation," said a researcher. (9/28)

Rocketeers Go Ballistic in Black Rock Desert (Source: Reno Gazette-Journal)
A three-day festival gave more than 200 rocketry enthusiasts an opportunity to push the boundaries of explosive propulsion in the hands of private citizens this weekend on the Black Rock Desert. Forget bottle rockets. Aeronautic devotees arrived from as far away as Australia and the United Kingdom to launch experimental rockets often 16 times larger than a common hobby rocket at the 17th annual Tripoli Rocketry Association National Experimental Launch Friday through Sunday. (9/28)

Spokesman: China to Build Space Station in 2020 (Source: Xinhua)
China aims to set up a space station in 2020 and before that it will launch a "simple" space lab in 2011, said a spokesman of the country's manned space program. The station will be attended to by human beings, said Wang Zhaoyao at a press conference. The orbiter docking technology will be tested after the Shenzhou-7 mission, he said. (9/28)

Arrest Part of Ramped-Up Effort to Curb Arms Sales (Source: Virginian-Pilot)
The recent arrest of a Newport News scientist on charges of selling space technology to China is part of an ongoing U.S. crackdown on illegal arms sales to the communist nation. Quan-Sheng Shu is expected to ask a federal judge Monday to go free on bond. Shu has been in jail since Wednesday facing charges that he sold China technical details on how to build a sophisticated rocket that the U.S. government says China plans to use in future space missions. Federal prosecutors will ask the judge to keep Shu in jail without bond pending grand jury action.

The U.S. Justice Department announced last fall a "national counter-proliferation initiative" aimed at stopping the exporting of restricted military and dual-use technology to nations prohibited from receiving such items, particularly, though, China and Iran. Dual-use technology could mean a rocket designed for a space launch being used to fire a military missile. (9/28)

Virgin Galactic Mothership's First Flight Delayed to Year's End (Source: Flight Global)
The maiden flight of Virgin Galactic's Scaled Composites' WhiteKnightTwo mothership has been delayed, possibly to the end of the year. When the aircraft was rolled out at Mojave air and spaceport based on 28 July, Virgin Galactic announced a September first flight target for its all-composite prototype mothership. The development program for the mothership, which can carry up to 17,000kg to 50,000ft will continue well into 2009 when it will start captive flight tests of the prototype suborbital ship, SpaceShipTwo (SS2), the roll-out for which is expected in the first half of next year. (9/28)

50 Years From Now, Will NASA Still Inspire? (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The front hall of the National Air and Space Museum is a temple to man-made wonders. Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis is here, suspended near the X-1 that Chuck Yeager flew to break the sound barrier. But it's what sits beneath these relics that moves most visitors: nine trophies from NASA's golden years, including the Apollo 11 capsule that carried Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin to the moon nearly 40 years ago. But there's something missing from the display: NASA's current workhorse, the space shuttle. A scale model of the orbiter sits two rooms away, dwarfed by rockets of yesteryear. The placement is symbolic of NASA's failure to inspire Americans during the past 36 years, since the end of the moon program.

"Where I get depressed is the human-spaceflight program," sighed museum curator Roger Launius, looking at the shuttle mock-up. "Our lead [over other countries] is lessening. Will they overtake us? That's the question for the next 50 years." With half a century of amazing accomplishments behind it, NASA is entering a second space age beset by uncertainty and searching for a renewal of "the right stuff." "It is absolutely feasible that the Chinese will [get to the moon] before we are able to do it because they have the political will to do it," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a security expert at the U.S. Naval War College. (9/28)

SpaceX Conducts Central Texas Rocket Engine Test (Source: Temple Daily Telegram)
Thursday night seemed like a normal fall evening in rural McLennan County. Crickets chirping. Cows bellowing in the distance. Trucks humming out on the highway. The clickety clack of a passing train. A falling star. Then, on the horizon, a green flash, followed by an orange ball of fire, growing brighter than the sun. Next a low roar, like a giant vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t the apocalypse, or a UFO. Rather, Space Exploration Technologies - called SpaceX - was simultaneously test firing nine of its American-made Merlin 1C rocket engines from a mock launch pad at its 300-acre test site in the McGregor Business Park. “Everything went beautifully. It was another successful Falcon 9 development accomplishment,” Lauren Dreyer, business development manager with SpaceX, said. “We got all the data we needed.” (9/28)