March 7, 2018

NASA Prepping Lean for Orion Test Planned at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Space Daily)
With the arrival of the Orion crew module to be used in the Ascent Abort-2 test at Johnson Space Center in Houston, the team is already at work with a lean, iterative development approach to minimize cost and ensure the flight test stays on schedule. The approach involves considering how to do things differently, finding ways to execute elements of the buildup more efficiently and pushing on the norms of doing business to see if there are areas where productivity can be enhanced.

Shuttle heritage hardware, such as pyrotechnic control cards that otherwise were not being used, are being integrated into flight designs which allows the team to avoid building or building everything new. Flight and ground software architectures have been evolved from other development projects.

Engineers involved in outfitting the crew module simultaneously are being trained to be flight controllers who will supervise the test when it launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Since the engineers involved in the work are extremely knowledge about the vehicle's systems, they are being trained as operators and builders at the same time. The crew module will return to Johnson in September and be mated with the separation ring before the two elements are then tested together and shipped to Kennedy Space Center in December. (3/7)

Griffin: DOD 'Mission Assurance' Focus Raises Space System Costs (Source: Space News)
The new head for research and engineering in the Defense Department says he wants to change the Pentagon's approach to procurement. Mike Griffin, the former NASA administrator who was sworn in as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering last month, said at a conference Tuesday that the department takes too long to develop new systems and has too many people involved on them. That applied to space systems in particular, he said: "We've trapped ourselves in a vicious cycle of spending a lot of money on mission assurance which makes the assets incredibly expensive." (3/6)

Verification/Qualification Efforts Could Slow NASA Exploration Systems Completion (Source: Space News)
Simultaneous development of exploration and commercial crew systems could result in a "bottleneck" of safety and other reviews, a panel warned. NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, meeting last week, identified no major new safety issues with the SLS and Orion programs or the two commercial crew vehicles under development. However, they said "a wall of verification and qualification processes" could strain the limited number of NASA personnel responsible for them, which could slow down the programs. The panel also said NASA should find "prudent and safe ways" to shorten the time between the first and second SLS missions after NASA elected not to fund construction of a second mobile launch platform. (3/6)  

BlackSky Constellation's First Satellite Ready for Launch (Source: Space News)
The first satellite for the BlackSky constellation of Earth-imaging satellites is complete and ready for launch. Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries said Tuesday that the Global-1 satellite is the first of four that the company plans to launch in the next year on U.S. and foreign launch vehicles. The satellite, capable of taking images at a resolution of one meter, will be part of an eventual constellation of 60 satellites Spaceflight is developing in a partnership with Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio. (3/6)

Russian Company Plans Suborbital Space Tourism Flights (Source: Tass)
A Russian company says it plans to start offering suborbital spaceflights in the mid-2020s. CosmoCourse is developing a rocket and capsule that would carry six passengers and one crewmember on a suborbital flight, with an estimated ticket price of $250,000. The company said development of the system will cost an estimated $150-200 million, which it is attempting to raise. (3/6)

Lessons From the Tunguska Event (Source: Space Daily)
Russia's state emergency center has shared some of the most worrisome scenarios that presumably await planet Earth in the decades to come, and, most importantly, outlined how dangerous the contact with celestial bodies might turn out. Large asteroids of up to one kilometer in diameter are feared to come into dangerous proximity to Earth in the coming years, "Antistikhiya" center of Russian Emergency management ministry said. Up till 2050, we are expecting 11 events of asteroids approximating Earth closer than the average lunar orbit radius, which is 385 thousand kilometers. The objects vary in size from seven to 945 meters." (3/7)

Embry-Riddle Researchers Eye Buckypaper for Keeping Astronauts Safe in Inflatable Habitats (Source: Space Daily)
At first, inflatable habitats in orbit around Earth may sound like a dangerous idea, given that the vacuum of space is littered with, as NASA says, "millions of pieces of human-made debris or space junk consisting mainly of fragmented rocket bodies and spacecraft parts created by 50 years of exploration." Imagine the consequences of a micrometeoroid or a piece of space junk half that size, moving at 22,000 miles per hour as it strikes an inflatable space habitat.

A team of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University faculty and graduate student researchers is helping NASA answer questions about the feasibility of humans living in these structures beyond the Earth's grasp. Their research focuses on developing and refining smart material sensors that are used to detect stress or damage in critical structures, such as automobile motors or the wings of aircraft. They are creating a new generation of sensors using a type of carbon nanotubes called buckypaper that is sensitive enough to detect the impact of even the smallest micrometeoroids.

What if thousands of these tiny sensors could be used to coat a large flexible membrane on, say, an inflatable habitat in space? They might more accurately monitor strain to the structure and pinpoint impacts from nearly invisible micrometeoroids. (3/7)