HOUSTON — NASA and its longtime partner, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), are positioning themselves to fund and restart the production of plutonium-238 within “six to seven years” as a power source for a range of possible missions to the outer Solar System, including those assigned to support the search for extraterrestrial life.
FORT EUSTIS, Va. — As it prepares to launch a technology demonstration for the next generation of rotorcraft, the U.S. Army’s aviation research arm has a series of smaller programs getting under way that will feed technology into the Joint Multi Role (JMR) effort. From avionics to engines, and airframes to weapons, the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) at Fort Eustis, Va., has had an array of science and technology (S&T) programs ongoing since 2004 to lay the foundations for the Army’s next rotorcraft.
Two members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that sets NASA funding — a Democrat and a Republican — blasted the agency’s proposal to take a deep cut in its planetary-science accounts, and to drop out of its joint robotic Mars exploration effort with the European Space Agency (ESA).
NASA has selected 24 suborbital space technology payloads to fly this year and next on a mix of reusable commercial launch vehicles, high-altitude balloons and aircraft flying parabolas to briefly simulate weightlessness. Under the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program, 16 of the payloads will fly on the Zero-G parabolic aircraft; two will go on balloons from Near Space Corp. that fly above 65,000 ft.; five will fly on suborbital, reusable launch vehicles; and one will fly both on a balloon and a suborbital launch vehicle.
A revision of the 2004 U.S. space transportation policy is likely to include “directive language” designed to boost the commercial space industry, according to a former official who helped draft the broad policy that the revision will illuminate.
HOUSTON — NASA’s planetary science program, faced with a steep cut in President Barack Obama’s proposed 2013 budget, is counting on a successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and closer ties to the better-funded human space exploration initiative to support a timely rebound, top agency science officials said during the opening session of the 43rd annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) here.
HOUSTON — Thanks to a final shuttle mission in July 2011, the International Space Station is well provisioned to sustain a six-person crew and a full research agenda well into 2013, NASA Program Manager Mike Suffredini said March 20. The outlook as Atlantis touched down after the 13-day STS-135 mission on July 21 was that the station had enough supplies for a year.
A dozen NASA software patents are scheduled to go on the auction block next week, covering potential applications in software development, telecommunications, smart grids, robotics, wireless sensor networks and cybersecurity. Goddard Space Flight Center’s Innovative Partnerships Program Office will offer the software at auction in three lots at the 15th ICAP Ocean Tomo IP Auction in Palos Verdes, Calif. Successful bidders will receive exclusive licensing rights and time with the technologies’ NASA inventors.
Members of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) voted overregulation as their number one long-term concern in the association’s annual member’s survey, but uneasiness about skilled worker shortages was close behind at the number two spot, said Christian Klein, EVP, ARSA, at the association’s symposium last week in Arlington, Va. The workforce issue came in as the second most important long-term threat to the aviation maintenance industry, tied with high fuel prices and grievances with the FAA.
In 1989, when Paul Graziani and two friends dreamed up what has become Analytical Graphics Inc., they sat in his living room envisioning a work environment where people could do their best work, creating new and bold things at a speed that would keep them happy and challenged. They would create commercial off-the-shelf analysis software for the security and space sectors, driving down cost while bringing the power of current and dynamic software to a non-consumer market.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Florida’s longtime Democratic senator and two recent tea party additions to the state’s congressional delegation are teaming to have the Space Coast designated a special zone in need of extra government assistance. The would-be Shuttle Workforce Revitalization Act, cosponsored by Sens. Bill Nelson (D) and Marco Rubio (R), looks to designate Brevard County as a “historically underutilized business zone,” or HUBZone. The designation gives small businesses in areas deemed economically challenged preference when the government doles out contracts.
Some astronauts who have spent extended periods in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS) have developed abnormalities in their eyes and pituitary gland/brain connectors that are similar to a type of intracranial hypertension that occurs on the ground. The finding may help Earth-bound physicians understand what causes the potentially serious condition, but it already has NASA flight surgeons pondering how they can mitigate it when astronauts travel into deep space.
Jilted by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to press ahead with its ExoMars program in partnership with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which plans to contribute Proton launch vehicles and a new entry, descent and landing system to the ambitious two-pronged Mars mission in 2016 and 2018. Russia’s arrival as the savior of ExoMars is not without cost, however, as ESA now will have to fund development of a rover for the 2018 mission that NASA had previously planned to share.
The space shuttle Discovery passes its sister ship Atlantis (see photo) March 9 as Kennedy Space Center prepares the retired orbiter fleet for transport to their new museum homes. Discovery is scheduled to arrive at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport on April 19. It will replace the Enterprise atmospheric test article now on display inside the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar.
It's no secret that Boeing's space systems unit is aggressively pricing bids in an effort to grow its commercial business segment as government spending flags. But even the most bullish observers were taken aback by an estimated $400 million deal just signed with Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) and Satellites Mexicanos (SatMex) to build the first all-electric commercial telecom spacecraft intended for launch to geostationary orbit.
Field scientists studying global climate change, marine biology, astronomy and other subjects in Antarctica may gain a robust satellite link to colleagues at home if a Russian working group permits salvage of a state-of-the-art communications satellite stranded in a useless orbit last summer. A working group of Russian agencies and companies is expected to decide later this month what to do with Express-AM4, which has been declared a total loss by its insurance underwriter after a Proton launch mishap last Aug. 18.
Robert J. Stevens, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, went to Capitol Hill on March 14 with a message for lawmakers: You're making my life hell. At issue are automatic cuts to U.S. defense spending scheduled to take effect next January. If Congress and the Obama administration cannot reach a budget compromise by then, military budgets will be hit with a $53 billion cut in 2013 and another $450 billion in reductions during the next nine years.
In 1967, a 19-year-old university student made a daring escape from Fidel Castro's Cuba, reaching the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The chief of naval operations (CNO) happened to be visiting the base, and he took Pedro L. Rustan back to Florida on his plane. Forty-four years to the day after that escape, Pete Rustan retired as director of the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) Mission Support Directorate. His government service ended with an enviable list of accomplishments that led to significant advances in aviation and space and helped greatly improve U.S.
Amy Svitak (Washington), Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington)
Jilted by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to press ahead with its ExoMars program in partnership with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which plans to contribute Proton launch vehicles and a new entry, descent and landing system to the ambitious two-pronged Mars mission in 2016 and 2018. Russia's arrival as the savior of ExoMars is not without cost, however, as ESA will now have to fund development of a rover for the 2018 mission that NASA had previously planned to share.
A half-century-plus after Sputnik, the swirling mass of operational spacecraft and space junk that has grown up around the planet is overwhelming mankind's ability to keep track of it, much less clean it up. Some of the world's biggest commercial satellite operators have teamed up to help each other with their space situational awareness (SSA), spurred by the 2009 collision between an active Iridium low-Earth-orbit (LEO) spacecraft and a defunct Russian military bird.
Government payloads riding piggyback on commercial spacecraft are likely to win only 1% of the worldwide satellite-market revenue in the next few years, as bureaucratic inertia and a “not-invented-here” mentality work against the potential cost savings.
Power-saving integrated circuits that extend battery life in portable electronics, and are being applied to military radios and investigated for avionics, are the overall winner of Aviation Week's 2012 Innovation Challenge, organized to bring new technologies and processes to the attention of aerospace and defense leaders.
In the uncertain funded world of human spaceflight, the habit of die-hard propulsion engineers to never throw anything away is becoming increasingly useful as NASA looks for crew transports.
The world has changed in the slightly more than three years since the Kepler planet-finding spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit on a Delta II rocket. For starters, the Earth has 61 new cousins scattered around the universe, and another 2,321 new candidate-planets awaiting confirmation by astronomers as the real things.
