GAG ORDER: NASA’s leadership challenges the logic of asking experts for their honest opinions when science chief John Grunsfeld reminds scientists on the NASA Advisory Council that they are “temporary” government employees when in formal session, and as such required to support — at least in theory — the fiscal 2013 NASA budget proposed by President Barack Obama. The budget would gut the joint Mars exploration program with the European Space Agency. Grunsfeld apparently is not keen on having his independent advisory body become too critical of the administration’s plans.
Satellite operators see hopeful signs that their spacecraft eventually will play host to payloads supplied by cash-strapped governments trying to save a buck in today's tight budget environment, but so far concrete new deals have yet to materialize. In July 2011 Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, head of the USAF Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), set up a dedicated hosted-payload office (HPO) to look for military space missions that could take advantage of piggyback rides on other spacecraft, and to help develop and integrate the resulting payloads.
The House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA funding has rejected the agency’s request to begin shutting down its cooperative Mars-exploration effort with the European Space Agency, until the issue can be debated thoroughly. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), the subcommittee chairman, rejected a fiscal 2012 reprogramming request that would have shifted funds immediately to accommodate the Mars-program downsizing set up in the fiscal 2013 budget request.
PARIS — Iridium CEO Matt Desch says his company will announce an agreement by June with global air traffic monitoring authorities to place automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) terminals on its Iridium Next second-generation satellite constellation, which is scheduled to be fully operational by 2017.
The FCC is extending the comment period until March 16 on a recent notice that LightSquared had not met the conditions set by the agency to begin operational deployment of a high-powered terrestrial 4G voice and data network in the L band. Citing concerns that the network would pose aviation safety risks by interfering with GPS units, the FCC last month indefinitely suspended LightSquared’s conditional waiver to operate the network in bands adjacent to those used by GPS (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 16).
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden ran into a Capitol Hill buzz saw Wednesday regarding agency plans to cut funding for its internal development of the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew capsule, while adding more financial resources to support development of commercial crew transport vehicles.
LOS ANGELES — Boeing’s ongoing efforts to revive the fortunes of its commercial space business received another boost with confirmation of an agreement with mobile satellite service Artel to distribute Inmarsat-3, -4 and -5 bandwidth to potential U.S. government users. The deal, signed between Boeing Commercial Satellite Services and Artel, is initially focused on providing Ka-bandwidth on Inmarsat-3 and -4 satellites. Inmarsat-5 global satellite communications will be available in late 2013, the manufacturer says.
ATV LAUNCH: The European Space Agency (ESA) has set March 23 as the rescheduled date for the launch of the third Automated Transfer Vehicle, Edoardo Amaldi, on a five-month supply mission to the International Space Station. The liftoff from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 is scheduled for 12:31 a.m. EDT (4:31 GMT). Preparations leading to a March 9 liftoff were postponed on March 2.
XIAN, China — China’s new medium-heavy space launcher, the Long March 7, should fly late next year, entering service in an initial version capable of lifting 13.5 metric tons (30,000 lb.) to low orbit, making it significantly larger than current Chinese rockets. The Long March 7 will have four boosters, says the principal engineer of manufacturer CALT, Shen Lin, adding that China is also planning new upper stages and launch vehicles, some using solid propellants and others fueled with methane.
NASA is missing opportunities to transfer key technologies from its substantial research and development investments to the commercial sector, academia and other government agencies, according to an inspector general’s audit of the agency’s Space Technology Program.
XIAN, China — China would develop two large new engines, including one sized for a Moon rocket, under an apparently official plan set out by senior engineers associated with the country’s space propulsion industry. The proposed program would include re-engining the Long March 5 heavy launcher, which is still under development.
XIAN, China — Japan’s space program will employ a new idle-thrust engine mode as a standard method of safely deorbiting second stages in missions of the H-IIB launcher, following a successful first mission last year.
HOUSTON — Texas A&M University is leading a collaboration on a novel “soft-push” technique for diverting hazardous Near Earth Asteroids that is gathering maturity for a future orbital flight test. NASA’s Ames Research Center and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia are collaborating with Texas A&M Aerospace Engineering Professor David Hyland, as he and his students seek a flight test opportunity as a secondary payload.
ATHENA PAD: Lockheed Martin has picked Alaska’s Kodiak Launch Complex as its dedicated West Coast site for Athena rocket launches. The company has been working with the state of Alaska and Alaska Aerospace Corporation on expansion plans for the new medium–lift launch pad to support potential Athena III launches. The company says it is “positioned to expand the Athena II program as it continues to evaluate the business case for Athena III launches from Alaska.” Lockheed Martin and partner ATK announced the resurrection of the Athena line in 2010.
Controllers are checking out the U.S. Navy's first Mobile User Objective System (MUOS-1) military communications spacecraft after its launch on an Atlas V, but it will be at least next year before troops can use its high-capacity new Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) payload for communications in motion.
In the 1990s the Pentagon was spending a lot of missile defense money on technology that could link its missile-launch warning sensors to “cue” the missile-intercept weapons it was developing. At the same time, astronomers worldwide were using the Internet and an instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory to cue their ground-based telescopes to gamma ray bursts virtually anywhere in the universe.
NASA will try to use its advanced technology programs to mollify planetary scientists outraged over the shutdown of the agency's ambitious plans to explore Mars in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). That may help restore some calm, as long as the capabilities developed as part of NASA's new open-ended technology push advance scientists' stated need to examine Mars samples in laboratories on Earth. So far, it is not clear that the work that is just getting started will be able to do that.
While the 500 customers Virgin Galactic has signed up—at $200,000 each—for a few minutes of microgravity on SpaceShipTwo (SS2) attract the headlines, the company is also seeking a different kind of passenger for its suborbital flights: scientists who are just as eager to buy research space in a box, or even a test tube.
BALLOONING: Near Space Corp. (NSC) is to begin construction this spring on a $6.9 million, 31,000-sq.-ft. commercial high-altitude balloon launch facility at its home base of Tillamook, Ore. NSC is one of seven suborbital flight providers in NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program and the only one not using rockets. The company expects to launch 10 research missions this year to altitudes exceeding 130,000 ft. Depending on their size, NSC’s balloons can support payloads up to 1 ton. NSC’s Eric Byers says the balloons typically have a loiter time of 3 hr.
Planning for the European Space Agency’s 2019 Lunar Lander mission incorporates three-dimensional imaging lidar technology to steer the spacecraft’s descent through the hazards of the ridge and boulder-filled landscape at the Moon’s south pole. Jena-Optronik, of Germany, and NEPTEC, of Canada, are leading parallel development efforts in low-power, minimal-volume lidar hardware for the hazard detection and avoidance function.
Houston – NASA’s emerging plans to consolidate “arc jet” testing of spacecraft thermal protection systems at Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, Calif., by closing a 46-year-old facility at Johnson Space Center in Houston are drawing protests from Texas lawmakers, who believe a dual capability is essential to the nation’s efforts to develop future commercial as well as government piloted and robotic spacecraft.
EXTENSION: NASA has awarded a contract extension and a pair of options worth a potential $46.6 million to Computer Sciences Corp. of Fort Worth for flight line service, maintenance and modifications of agency aircraft based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Effective March 1, the accord extends a $162.1 million base contract between NASA and Computer Sciences that became effective Sept. 1, 2009.
Palo Alto, Calif. – Virgin Galactic will be able to offer the potential of a “seamless” transition for scientists doing long-term microgravity experiments on the International Space Station and short-term suborbital flights aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo under an agreement with NanoRacks.
Singapore – Anatoly Perminov, the former director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has downplayed the prospect that Russia will have manned space missions to the Moon. In recent weeks, Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin disclosed that Russian astronauts may land on the Moon in 2020. Perminov, who stepped down last year as director general of Roscosmos and is now deputy director general of the agency’s joint-stock company, Russian Space Systems, was dismissive when asked about the reports.
