PRIME TIME: NBC plans to broadcast a reality TV competition called “Space Race” that will offer a flight to the edge of space on the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo to its winner. The U.S. network signed a deal with Virgin Galactic and One Three Media, which produced Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice and other “unscripted series.” The production team will have “unprecedented access” to Virgin’s operations at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and will begin distribution activities at an upcoming marketing conference in Cannes, France.
Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet. A scoop of geologic fines — dust and finely grained soil — collected for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite inside the rover body detected water molecules that someday may be recovered by astronauts practicing in situ resource utilization (ISRU).
At NASA, which celebrated its 55th anniversary by furloughing 97% of its workforce, concern is centered on two programs trying to stay on schedule for their launch windows.
STILL SPENDING: A U.S. government shutdown and debt ceiling fight on Capitol Hill notwithstanding, nominal federal spending plans for fiscal 2014 and beyond entail $117 billion in defense information technology (IT) contracting opportunities, according to federal IT consulting company Deltek. Another $38 billion will come from civilian agencies like NASA, FAA and others. Furthermore, despite a common industry complaint that budget caps in recent years have essentially derailed new-start programs, that is not the case. Deltek said in a webinar to clients Oct.
BEIJING — With the success of its high-resolution Pleiades optical imaging satellites, French space agency CNES is preparing a demonstration of a potential follow-on system that would launch in the early 2020s, most likely on a European Vega rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou. The OTOS technology demo, formerly known as CXCI, is the precursor to a dual system designed to capture up to 750 images per day per satellite at 20- to 30-cm ground resolution and a swath width of 15-20 km in panchromatic mode.
PARIS — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) says a new version of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle aborted a planned restart of its upper stage engine during an otherwise successful Sept. 29 debut of the upgraded rocket.
HOUSTON—The shutdown of the U.S. government that began Oct. 1 may have stalled NASA’s Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop, but not the determination of two dozen of the 140 participants to collaborate independently on how to address the near-Earth object collision threat. The three-day, NASA-sponsored, invitation-only workshop was shuttered after the Sept. 30 half-day opening session. The agency expects to reconvene the final two days of the dual-track program via webcast, though the details are yet to be formulated
NEW DELHI — India on Oct. 2 moved its Mars Orbiter to the launch pad at Sriharikota range for its scheduled launch to the red planet on Oct. 28. After a series of tests, scientists at the India Space Research Organization (ISRO) gave the green light to transport the 1,340-kg orbiter to the launch pad for integration with the 350-ton rocket, which is an extended version of the space agency’s workhorse launcher, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL), an ISRO scientist says.
BEIJING — Chinese engineers are proposing a Moon rocket more powerful than the Saturn V of the Apollo missions and matching the payload of NASA’s planned Space Launch System (SLS) Block 2, the unfunded launcher that would put the U.S. back into super-heavy space lift.
NEW DELHI — India will make a fresh attempt to loft its GSAT-14 communications satellite aboard a Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D5) on Dec. 15, nearly two months after its launch was called off due to a fuel leak in the rocket’s second stage, a senior space scientist says. On Aug. 19, a leak was spotted in the fuel system of the second stage during the pre-launch pressurization phase on the vehicle. Propellants were drained and the GSLV was moved back to the vehicle assembly building to assess the cause of the leak.
LOS ANGELES — SpaceX says post-launch indications of a larger-than-expected debris field scattered in the orbital path of its recently launched Falcon 9 v1.1 upgraded launch vehicle do not represent a possible explosion of the rocket’s second stage.
Russia’s Proton M launch vehicle returned to flight Sept. 30, nearly two months after a July 2 mishap sent the heavy-lift rocket and three Russian Glonass M satellites crashing to the ground at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Managed by commercial launch services provider International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va., the Baikonur mission sent the Astra 2E commercial communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit for Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest fleet operator by revenue.
BEIJING — Top scientists here are citing China’s burgeoning population, growing energy consumption and severe pollution problems to press the case for more research in space solar power (SSP) technology, which would place large solar-energy collectors in orbit to beam gathered energy to Earth as microwaves or laser light.
BEIJING — Engineers in Russia believe the Zarya cargo module, the oldest pressurized module on the International Space Station (ISS), can last in orbit until about 2028 — twice its design service life — despite microcracking in the hull during pressure and loads cycling of a test article on the ground.
HOUSTON — Some of the brightest in global aerospace are poised to pitch their recommendations for NASA’s proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission and Grand Challenge. They will offer suggestions for an unbudgeted, multi-year demonstration of human and robotic strategies to thrust explorers out of low Earth orbit for the first time in 40 years, while assembling defenses against the collision threat posed by Near Earth Objects.
LOS ANGELES — SpaceX launched its upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Sept 29, marking the first demonstration of the vehicle the company plans to also use for human spaceflight missions.
PAYING BILLS: Congress passed a bill Sept. 30 that would keep salary payments going to active military personnel and civilian Defense and Homeland Security department employees and contractors “providing support to members of the armed forces.” The bill comes as everyone else in the U.S. government faced the consequences of a federal shutdown, which loomed Oct. 1 unless lawmakers and President Barack Obama reached an agreement on fresh appropriations overnight.
Orbital Sciences’ unpiloted Cygnus resupply craft will make a second attempt to rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station early Sept. 29, management teams from NASA and the Dulles, Va.,-based company decided Sept. 27. The latest operations plan would position Cygnus, with its 1,543-lb. cargo of crew provisions, about 35 ft. below the orbiting science lab at 7:15 a.m. EDT, for an astronaut-commanded robot arm grapple.
Chinese Confusion: Ma Xingrui, administrator of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), tells the 64th International Astronautical Congress that his country is ready to join the International Space Exploration Group, a multinational organization of space agencies developing road maps for human exploration of the Solar System. But according to the ISEGC Terms of Reference, CNSA is “automatically” a member because it helped draft the 2007 framework document on which the organization was based.
China’s new medium-heavy space launcher, Long March 7, is very likely to fly in 2014, says an industry official, confirming a delayed target announced six months ago.
I began my career in the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry as an export sales manager for a European missile manufacturer (now MBDA). It was a somewhat unusual career move for a business school graduate with no engineering background. Today, even fewer graduates have A&D high on their lists when they look for jobs as sales or marketing managers. This is, after all, an industry built by engineers, and its reputation is based primarily on products and the technological innovations that underpin them.
Now that Orbital Sciences Corp. has launched its Antares/Cygnus combo off to the International Space Station, NASA soon will have two routes to the orbiting laboratory. That will come in handy as the U.S. agency works to use the $100 billion engineering marvel as much as possible. Building the ISS was an accomplishment without precedent, but keeping it supplied with experiments and food is not that easy either.
A U.S. and Russian Soyuz crew docked with the International Space Station late Sept. 25, completing a third consecutive “express” four-orbit launch-to-rendezvous transit to restore the orbiting science lab to a crew of six. The Soyuz TMA-10M rocket lifted Expedition 37 Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, NASA flight engineer Michael Hopkins and Russian flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy. The crew launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 25 at 4:58 p.m. EDT (Sept. 26 at 2:58 a.m., local time).
