A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 with a Centaur upper stage lifted NASA's twin Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission spacecraft into orbit Aug. 30 from Cape Canaveral on a two-year mission to study high-energy particle fluctuations within Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. The $686 million mission is expected to investigate how the belts respond to solar activity and influence space weather. The two 1,400-lb. probes were developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as part of NASA's Living with a Star initiative.
Germany's aerospace industry has been growing, driven by civil air transport demand. But it is facing difficult changes as its defense-related business contracts.
William G. Purdy cautioned in 1966 that society was on a path where affluence and regulation threatened to choke off interest in “unorthodox inquiries.”
If Neil Armstrong had written his own obituary, he likely would have said he had been a test pilot, an engineer, an educator and one of the 400,000 Americans who helped land the first humans on the Moon. Less important to him was the combination of experience and lucky career choices that placed him as the first person to reach the surface of a body beyond Earth.
HOUSTON — NASA’s twin Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission spacecraft thundered into Earth orbit atop an Atlas 5/Centaur upper stage combination early Aug. 30, initiating a $686 million, two-year mission for studies of high-energy particle fluctuations within the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, including their response to solar activity and influences on space weather. The United Launch Alliance rocket carrying the two 1,400-lb. probes lifted off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 4:05 a.m. EDT.
SOFIA FLIES: NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia) is to begin its 2012-2013 mission series in November from Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. Called Cycle 1, the science series will include 46 flights grouped in four multi-week observing campaigns. Sofia is a 747SP modified to carry a 100-in.-dia. infrared telescope.
GALILEO DELIVERY: Manufacturer Astrium has delivered the third and fourth Galileo navigation and timing satellites to the European Space Agency’s launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, following an acceptance review. The two spacecraft will be launched aboard a Soyuz rocket, joining two satellites already in space to complete the initial Galileo In Orbit Validation system. In February, Astrium received a contract from ESA to adapt the Ariane 5 launcher to be able to launch four Galileo satellites in a single mission.
LOS ANGELES — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is modifying its manufacturing flow at Hawthorne, Calif., as part of plans to boost production of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket cores to 40 per year. The re-modeling is required to ramp up the rate to meet the existing and expected launch demand, says SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. “Next year we need to build one core per month, and then ramp up 50% year-over-year to be where we want to be.”
GALILEO DELIVERY: Manufacturer Astrium has delivered the third and fourth Galileo navigation and timing satellites to the European Space Agency’s launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, following an acceptance review. The two spacecraft will be launched aboard a Soyuz rocket, joining two satellites already in space to complete the initial Galileo In Orbit Validation system. In February, Astrium received a contract from ESA to adapt the Ariane 5 launcher to be able to launch four Galileo satellites in a single mission.
LOS ANGELES — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is modifying its manufacturing flow at Hawthorne, Calif., as part of plans to boost production of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket cores to 40 per year. The re-modeling is required to ramp up the rate to meet the existing and expected launch demand, says SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. “Next year we need to build one core per month, and then ramp up 50% year-over-year to be where we want to be.”
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is revealing energetic, previously unobserved supermassive black holes, including a new mega-powerful class of objects that appear to have influenced the transformation of galaxies, astronomers reported Aug. 29. Observations with a range of space- and ground-based observatories over the past decade have revealed the presence of supermassive black holes at the center of every galaxy.
LOS ANGELES — NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has returned images to Earth of Martian geological features that are completely “unexpected,” according to mission scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
CYBERSECURITY REQUIRED: The Pentagon, NASA and the General Services Administration are proposing a new contracting requirement for the “basic safeguarding of contractor information systems that contain information provided by or generated for the government.” The proposal was announced Aug. 24 in the Federal Register; comments can be submitted at Regulations.gov through Oct. 23.
