HOUSTON — The International Space Station’s mission operations team reported some progress Dec. 16 in its bid to manage the crippled thermal control system aboard the six-person orbiting science laboratory, but not enough to rule out unscheduled spacewalks this week to replace an external pump module housing the faulty flow control valve that is the source of the station’s ills.
KICKED UP: Scientists monitoring the lunar dust environment with NASA’s new Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) and two other spacecraft did not detect any initial effects from Saturday’s touchdown of China’s Chang’e 3 lunar lander and subsequent operations with its small rover.
BEIJING — China will launch a sample return mission to the Moon in 2017, officials say, while declaring complete success for the current Chang’e 3 mission to land and deploy a lunar rover. The next mission, Chang’e 4, will be similar to the current effort, using a backup spacecraft and rover, but will be adapted to prove technologies for the sample-return mission, Chang’e 5, says Wu Zhijian, a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
NASA evaluators have selected SpaceX to lease and convert historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center for commercial spaceflight operations, waiting less than 24 hr. after the U.S. Government Accountability Office rejected a bid-process protest from Blue Origin. In what has been referred to as the “battle of the billionaires,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk trumped Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who has bankrolled Blue Origin’s efforts to develop commercial orbital and suborbital human launch systems.
HOUSTON — A U.S. International Space Station astronaut on Dec. 13 expressed confidence in NASA’s spacesuits and spacewalk procedures if they become an essential part of a strategy to resolve a cooling system problem that surfaced earlier this week, forcing a shutdown of some non-critical electrical systems and science experiments aboard the six-person lab.
In a bid to boost the ability to track orbital debris that could endanger satellites, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is seeking methods for the uncued detection of objects in low-inclined low Earth orbit (LILO). The LILO project is part of Darpa’s OrbitOutlook (O2) program to bolster the U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN) with new sensor, database and validation capabilities. The SSN is tasked with observing and tracking space objects.
ON HOLIDAY: The U.S. House of Representatives recessed for the holidays without taking up a Senate version of legislation to extend third-party indemnification for the space-launch industry, but contracts already in the works will not be affected when indemnification expires at year-end. Both houses of Congress have adopted extensions of indemnification, which protects launch companies if third parties are injured in a launch failure. But the House bill extends indemnification for only one year, while a Senate measure adopted Dec. 12 would grant a three-year extension.
After more than a decade of design work and pathfinder fabrication, the lightweight five-layer sunshield that will keep the sensitive infrared detectors on the James Webb Space Telescope at 40K is in deployment testing at prime contractor Northrop Grumman.
Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson defines close-mouthed, but as his secretive startup begins to notch some success in its plan to develop reusable space launchers, he is opening up a bit. He was unusually chatty during a press teleconference on the results of a full mission-cycle test of the clean-sheet BE-3 rocket engine Blue is developing to power its reusable suborbital New Shepard crew vehicle.
When EADS CEO Tom Enders announced a major strategic review of the group's defense and space business earlier this year, he inadvertently raised expectations for a plan to overcome the structural limitations of operating in Europe. As it turns out, the grand plan has a lot more to do with cutting jobs and finding internal efficiencies than with a new approach to markets.
The new U.S. National Space Transportation Policy and a U.S. Air Force office developed in parallel with the policy should improve the prospects for government hardware riding on commercial communications satellites as hosted payloads, according to a White House staff member who helped draft the policy.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. will work together on concept studies of what its backers hope will become the first commercial mission to Mars, a Phoenix-class lander designed to demonstrate in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and thin-film solar arrays for future human missions.
Crews traveling to Mars and back with today’s technology will face a 5% increase in their chances of developing cancer later in life, based on new data from NASA’s Curiosity rover released at the International Geophysical Union in San Francisco Dec. 9.
A remote-sensing satellite built by China and Brazil failed to reach low Earth orbit following a Dec. 9 launch atop a Chinese Long March 4B rocket from the Taiyuan space center in northern China, according to Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. In a Dec. 9 statement the ministry said the rocket carrying the CBERS 3 satellite malfunctioned after liftoff at 11:26 a.m. local time and that it failed to deliver the satellite to its intended Sun-synchronous orbit at 770 km altitude.
An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton M/Briz M rocket successfully orbited the first of four new all-Ka-band satellites Dec. 9 for London-based fleet operator Inmarsat, delivering the Boeing-built spacecraft to supersynchronous transfer orbit during a 15-hr. and 31-min. mission.
Scientists have found new evidence that ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves are a force behind the long-mysterious acceleration of highly energetic plasma particles within the Earth’s Van Allen Belts to near-speed-of-light velocities. The findings come from data gathered by NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes.
Startup World View Enterprises Inc. envisions a commercial high-altitude balloon experience for luxury-minded passengers and scientific researchers that will strive to deliver many of the prolonged experiences of spaceflight without the confinement, cost, risks or health limitations associated with rocket launches.
