XCOR Aerospace, the suborbital commercial spaceflight company founded in Mojave, Calif., announced a second easterly expansion on Aug. 23, outlining plans for flight operations as well as manufacturing and assembly facilities for its winged, two-seat Lynx Mark II reusable launch vehicle in Central Florida.
NASA’s Astrophysics Division plans to form a 12- to 15-member external team to assess potential science missions for a pair of surplus Hubble-class National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) space telescopes. The team’s work will be focused on addressing study priorities outlined by the National Research Council’s latest decadal survey in astronomy and astrophysics, according to an agency Notice of Intent. The team will assess two options: use of the surveillance satellites “as is,” and with a coronagraph suitable for exoplanet studies.
STATION INTEGRATION: Barrios Technology Ltd. of Houston will lead a team providing a range of mission and program integration support services for the International Space Station under a two-year base contract with options valued at a potential $384.7 million. The base portion of the small business set aside agreement is effective Oct. 1.
NEXT MISSION: As NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover prepares for its first moves, the agency is looking ahead to its next mission on the surface of the red planet. To launch in 2016, InSight will place instruments on the Martian surface to investigate whether the planet has a solid or liquid core, and why the planet’s crust is not divided into tectonic plates, like that of the Earth. The French and German space agencies are contributing instruments to InSight, which will land in September 2016 to begin a two-year mission.
Two demonstration Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) satellites, built by Northrop Grumman, captured these infrared images of a ballistic missile intercept from their low Earth orbit. In 2009, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) lofted the two STSS satellites, developed under the then-Space-Based Infrared System-low program, to explore whether orbiting spacecraft could be used to track warheads in mid-flight.
U.S. and French scientists plan to test the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover by “zapping” a nearby rock with “several megawatts” of laser power in the next few days and analyzing the resulting spectra to determine the target’s composition.
Jerry Grey has taught engineering at Princeton University and been science and policy director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is exploring whether a short-range missile defense target, designed to be one-third the price of using Patriot missiles in such a role, can feasibly be added to its arsenal to reduce the cost of flight testing. The Economical Target makes use of surplus rocket motors, coupled with a rudimentary rocket body to effectively form a sounding rocket suitable for some missile defense tests, says Thomas Webber, acting director for rapid transition at Army Strategic Command.
Aviation Week's 2012 Workforce Study data come from respondents that collectively employ 80% of the A&D industry's workforce of 624,000. Newcomers to this year's study include Alenia Aermacchi North America and Acutec Precision Machining.
LOGAN, Utah — Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology used to make parts for high-performance race cars is being applied to the tricky problem of propulsion for cubesats and other small spacecraft that are typically launched as secondary payloads. Matthew Dushku, head of the Experiment Propulsion Lab here, has tested a hybrid rocket motor created with a 3-D printing technique from Windform XT 2.0, a picocarbon reinforced nylon material that can be laid up in layers as a powder and hardened with a laser scanner.
PASADENA, Calif. — Even as more senior staffers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here begin to explore Mars with the state-of-the-art Curiosity rover, a group of scientists, engineers and neophyte managers in their 20s is preparing to use whatever is at hand to validate space-to-ground laser communications.
