HOUSTON — NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, home to Mission Control for the International Space Station and lead installation for development of the Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, would be the highest funded agency field center in 2015 and second ranked in number of civil servants, according to additional information on the agency’s budget request released this week. The rankings in both categories fall in line with previous spending and employment trends.
Astronomers are finding that rocky planets in the same size range as Earth are extremely common in the Universe, and a better understanding of what it takes for a planet to be habitable suggests more of them may be able to support life than previously thought, at least in theory. Work is ongoing to develop spacecraft able to test that theory, but for now it remains to be seen whether extraterrestrial life exists and can be detected by humans.
HOUSTON — NASA’s Human Research Program has selected 10 medical and psychological studies of identical astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly as Scott launches in March 2015 on a one-year mission to the International Space Station—the longest spaceflight ever by an American, and a voyage intended to establish a health care baseline for future missions beyond Earth orbit.
New green propulsion technology developed by Swedish Space Corp.’s Ecaps division will help enable Skybox Imaging to sell black-and-white images at resolutions well below 1 meter, positioning the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup to compete with established remote-sensing service providers in the U.S., Europe and Israel.
HOUSTON — U.S. and Russian crewmembers departed the International Space Station late March 10, leaving the six-person orbiting science laboratory with its first Japanese commander in charge. The returning astronauts descended safely to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft for a touchdown on the frigid, snow-blown plains of southern Kazakhstan.
JEJU, South Korea — The Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) plans to launch a one-off rocket in 2017 to test its Woorae-1 rocket engine, the key technology of its forthcoming KSLV-II space launcher. The KSLV-II, a largely indigenous successor to the much smaller Russo-Korean KSLV-I launched between 2009 and 2013, is due to make its first flight in 2020.
International Launch Services (ILS) is poised to benefit from new satellite export loan guarantees to be made available through the new Export Insurance Agency of Russia (Exiar), which will operate similarly to France’s Coface, ILS President Phil Slack said March 10.
A NASA-backed team is at work on advanced space-telescope technology that may allow researchers to measure the atmospheric composition of extra solar planets directly, by blocking the instrument-blinding direct light of a target star. NASA and Orbital Sciences Corp. are developing a spacecraft, set for launch in 2017, that is designed to add to the catalogue of exoplanets generated by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and by ground-based instruments.
Airbus Defense and Space and Intelsat have signed a multiyear Ku-band maritime mobile capacity agreement to bridge the satellite fleet operator’s existing service to its new, high-throughput Epic platform slated to enter service in 2016.
NASA, working in partnership with Planetary Resources, Inc., will offer $35,000 in awards as part of an Asteroid Data Hunter competition intended to improve the detection of near Earth objects that could pose an impact threat or provide future space resources.
The Senate on March 6 confirmed Kathryn Sullivan, an Earth scientist and oceanographer who was one of the first women chosen as a NASA astronaut, to be the next undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
An increase in funding of almost 5% is being sought for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) in Fiscal 2015 as several programs enter the hardware demonstration phase. The Pentagon is requesting $2.92 billion for Darpa in 2015, up from $2.78 billion in 2014—which was an increase of almost 8% over the $2.58 billion provided in 2013.
Japanese engineers have ground tested a turbojet in conditions equivalent to Mach 4, which they believe is the highest simulated speed at which a turbine engine has operated. The February round of tests was a step toward building an engine that, unlike ramjets, has the thrust and efficiency advantages of mechanical compression and the ability to propel an aircraft from takeoff to Mach 5.
NASA still wants to build the heavy-lift Space Launch System, and as long as Sen. Richard Shelby is alive, it will. The U.S. space agency needs the Alabama Republican, who is the ranking member of his party on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he needs the SLS to keep his constituents at the Marshall Space Flight Center happy. So the fairly level funding of $1.3 billion for the big rocket, plus some extra advanced-technology money, in the agency's fiscal 2015 budget request is no surprise.
Two retired NASA astronauts died recently—Dale A. Gardner, who helped capture two satellites in orbit and return them to Earth in 1984, and William R. Pogue, who logged 84 days on the first U.S. space station, Skylab, in 1973-74. Gardner, who died Feb. 19 in Colorado Springs, was 65. Pogue, who was 84 and died March 4, had been living in Cocoa Beach, Fla. The causes of the deaths were not disclosed.
The caption with a graphic depicting satellites and debris in Earth orbit accompanying an article in the March 3 edition (page 22) on a new U.S. satellite system to monitor other spacecraft incorrectly described a dense ring of objects. The region described was low Earth orbit, not geosynchronous orbit.
Launch schedule issues at Cape Canaveral, including launch of a classified U.S. government spacecraft known as Clio, may force NASA to delay its long-planned first flight of the Orion deep-space crew capsule from mid-September into October. The agency says Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin still could meet the earlier launch date, currently listed as Sept. 18.
