NEW DELHI — After the successful launch of India’s first Mars orbiter, scientists are planning the country’s next mission — this time to the Sun. On Nov. 18, solar physicists from across the country started three-day talks at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), based in the southern city of Bengaluru, to prepare for the country’s first solar mission, Aditya-1, which will carry equipment to study the Sun’s corona.
HOUSTON — Project Morpheus is returning to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center this week for several months of testing to demonstrate an autonomous, methane/liquid oxygen fueled precision planetary lander capability for future human as well as robotic missions. The first Morpheus lander was destroyed on Aug. 9, 2012, in a fiery crash within moments of lifting off from a Kennedy test area, cutting short an ambitious series of free flight tests.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s latest mission to Mars lifted off through scattered clouds Nov. 18, setting out on a 10-month voyage to discover what happened to the red planet’s water by literally sniffing its upper atmosphere. Liftoff of the Lockheed Martin-built Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) spacecraft from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral came at 1:28 p.m. EST, the opening of its 2-hr. launch window.
Engineering graduate and undergraduate students are displaying heightened interest in space-related studies as entrepreneurial space start-ups get ready to start flying, panelists discussing the role of academia in the burgeoning “New Space” movement said Nov. 15.
Phobos, the small irregularly shaped moon of Mars whose origins remain a mystery, may offer a repository for small amounts of soil and rock originating from the red planet, according to a study by Brown University scientists associated with Russia’s failed 2011 Phobos-Grunt sample return mission.
The U.S. Air Force’s upcoming Operationally Responsive Space-3 (ORS-3) demonstration, poised for launch Nov. 19 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va., is aimed at demonstrating a bevy of new technologies, as well as “commercial-like” launch processes that could reduce the cost of future national security space missions.
To protect against a gap in U.S. weather satellite data collection, a team reviewing progress on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) satellite program is recommending the weather monitoring department rapidly purchase additional sensors.
Globalstar, Inc. will market a personal anti-theft device, SPOT Trace, designed for safeguarding vehicles or other valuables using satellite communications and global positioning technologies.
The partnership approach NASA used to spur development of two commercial cargo vehicles for International Space Station logistics can hold down the cost of future development, the agency and its commercial partners said in a ceremony marking the official end of the program Nov. 13. But the agency has no solid plans to apply it beyond the commercial crew development effort already underway, and that work is drawing fire.
NASA can stretch its budget for deep-space human exploration by working in partnership with private companies, much as it hopes to do with international partners as it moves beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) to cislunar space and beyond, according to a report prepared for the agency by Bigelow Aerospace.
NEW DELHI — A day after an engine anomaly slowed its progress, India’s Mars Orbiter successfully raised its orbit to an apogee above 118,000 km (73,000 mi.) on Nov. 12. The country’s first Mars orbiter suffered a setback on Nov. 11 as attempts were made to raise the spacecraft’s orbit around Earth to built momentum for its trip to Mars. A minor problem with the liquid fuel thruster caused the 1,350-kg (3,000-lb.) vehicle to fall short of the mark.
PARIS — Europe’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at around 7 p.m. EDT Nov. 11 on a descending orbit pass that stretched across Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica. As expected, most of the satellite disintegrated in the upper atmosphere and no damage to property has been reported, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), though the agency says fragments reached Earth’s surface over the southernmost regions of the South Atlantic.
HOUSTON — Russia’s Soyuz TMA-09M descended to Earth late Nov. 10, returning a two-man, one-woman crew after 166 days aboard the International Space Station, along with a potentially faulty component suspected in the mid-July U.S. spacesuit failure that flooded the helmet of European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano with leaking water, prompting a suspension of NASA-sponsored spacewalks.
For the second time, Lockheed Martin has tested the unique fairings that will shield radiators and other delicate hardware on the Orion crew capsule’s service module during launch, using pyrotechnics and release mechanisms to jettison the hardware with simulated ascent heating. Engineers at the company’s facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., heated one of the three fairings to 200F and achieved what they termed “successful separation of all three fairings while under flight-like thermal and structural conditions.”
It is a commonplace that any future attempts to explore outer space will of necessity be an international effort. No single nation can afford the price of admission, and even with everyone pulling together, it will be difficult and dangerous. A recent television schedule for upcoming activities on the International Space Station brought that home.
Paul Anderson B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado. GPA: 4.0 Research: Evolution of the geosynchronous orbital debris environment. Undergraduate Research: Development of Stability Conditions of Oblique Wave Trains
YouTube goes a long way in highlighting the creativity and delight some of today's university students take in being . . . well, a nerd. Whether at Purdue University creating an over-engineered automated soft-drink dispensing system or at the University of Michigan putting a fresh take on dance-a-thon turned hack-a-thon, present-day engineering students add to the tradition of poking fun at who they are while reveling in what they do.
Since he was appointed CEO of Thales earlier this year, Jean-Bernard Levy has repeatedly proclaimed that there is nothing wrong with the company's business portfolio, because all of its operational units are profitable, if only marginally. Unfortunately, this view is symptomatic of the way most European aerospace and defense (A&D) players fail to understand the value of dynamic business portfolio management.
