NEW DELHI — India on Sept. 11 unveiled its Mars Orbiter, which is due to launch later this year to search the red planet’s atmosphere for methane, considered a “precursor chemical” for life. “The Mars orbiter is in the final stages of testing for launch between Oct. 21 and Nov. 19 on board a rocket with five scientific instruments to conduct various experiments after a nine-month voyage to the red planet,” says S.K. Shivkumar, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) satellite center director.
The Sept. 17 return to flight of Russia’s Proton rocket was postponed Sept. 11 for technical reasons associated with the Russian launch vehicle. Marketed by International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va., the commercial mission was slated to loft The EADS-Astrium-built Astra 2E satellite for fleet operator SES of Luxembourg. “The launch date will be determined at a later time,” ILS said in a Sept. 12 statement.
The Pentagon and NASA will spend $44 billion developing and launching spacecraft over the next five fiscal years, including a $7 billion chunk to develop NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
LOS ANGELES — SpaceX is gearing up for the first launch of its upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., carrying a Canadian satellite, on Sept. 15. “We are looking towards launch at the weekend,” says Adam Harris, SpaceX government sales vice president. “It’s on the pad at Vandenberg AFB and things [are] looking really great there,” he adds. The upgraded Falcon 9 launch, which is the vehicle’s inaugural deployment from the U.S. West Coast, will loft the Canadian-built CAScade, Smallsat and IOnospheric Polar Explorer (Cassiope) satellite.
HOUSTON — Russia’s Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft departed the International Space Station with a thee-man U.S. and Russian crew late Sept. 10, descending into Kazakhstan under parachute to bring Expedition 36, a 166-day mission, to a successful close. Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy were quickly greeted by helicopter-borne, Russian-led recovery teams as the capsule touched down southeast of Dzhezkagan at 10:58 p.m. EDT, or Sept. 11 at 8:58 a.m. local Kazakh time.
The Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) has announced that the recently launched DubaiSat-2 earth observation satellite has successfully been deployed in orbit and all systems have been tested and verified.
Inmarsat's first I-5 Global Xpress Ka-band satellite was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 8 December aboard a Proton Breeze M rocket.
Planetary scientists are preparing for at least 100 days of intensive study in the Moon’s tenuous atmosphere, after a spectacular nighttime launch from Wallops Island, Va., on a solid-fuel Minotaur V rocket that was visible up and down the U.S. East Coast.
STENNIS space center, Miss. — Upgrades to NASA’s enormous Apollo-era test stand at Stennis Space Center are on track for ground runs of the core stage of the agency’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle starting in 2016, according to engineers working on the project.
STENNIS SPACE CENTER, Miss. — Aerojet Rocketdyne expects to begin preparatory work for restarting production of all-new RS-25 engines as early as next month for future use in NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) vehicles in the 2020s.
HOUSTON — The latest suspected source of the worrisome water leak into the helmet of European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano during a July 16 spacewalk is a potentially clogged tube in the suit’s humidity removal system.
PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed the flight model of the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument slated to fly aboard NASA’s next flagship astronomy mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Built by EADS Astrium GmbH of Ottobrun, Germany, NIRSpec will be shipped later this month to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the 200-kg (440-lb.) spectrograph will undergo additional testing prior to integration with the JWST spacecraft’s payload module.
New technology can be surprisingly inexpensive. In the U.S., the Pentagon and the intelligence community spend billions of taxpayer dollars pushing the envelope on creative new hardware and software concepts that may never emerge from behind the black curtain of secrecy. That is probably a good thing for bombs and bullets, but it keeps a lot of potential dual-use technology out of the economy. Fortunately, there are means for innovation at the other end of the funding scale that can drive economic growth with actual, and significant, return on investment.
LOS ANGELES — Powered flight tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital spaceplane resumed on Sept. 5 with a supersonic sortie over Mojave, Calif., that included the use of the tail-plane feathering re-entry system.
HOUSTON — Houston is poised to seek a commercial spaceport license from FAA to establish a runway-based complex supporting reusable launch vehicles, spacecraft assembly and flight training, as well as aerospace research and education. The proposed spaceport would occupy 439 acres of Ellington Airport property close to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Golden Spike, the private U.S. startup established to create a human transportation service to the surface of the Moon, is gaining confidence it can make its business plan work as it wraps up initial engineering studies.
HOUSTON — A pair of NASA research aircraft — a P-3B turboprop and B200 King Air — take to the skies over Houston on Sept. 4 for a month-long state and federally sponsored campaign to refine the development of future satellite sensors capable of continuous air quality measurements from geosynchronous orbit.
DRIVER’s SEAT: NASA supporters may not like the limited funding being proposed by the Republicans who control the House, but space fans would be wise to study them, according to an ex-official of the embattled agency. Scott Pace, a former NASA associate administrator, says that by at least marking up their annual spending bill and a new NASA authorization bill within the constraints of spending limits mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, House Republicans have put themselves in the driver’s seat.
A classified U.S. National Reconnaissance Office KH-11 “Keyhole” satellite was successfully launched into low Earth orbit from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Aug. 28 by a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy.
Many of us have enjoyed spectacular video of rocket launches from the rocket's point of view, with the launch pad receding rapidly and strap-on boosters falling away as the black sky of space shows up around Earth's curve. The “RocketCam” videos are a staple on YouTube, but they have a value that far exceeds entertainment. In the high-stakes spaceflight business, video shots of rockets and other space hardware in action give engineers a much better view of system performance than even the most detailed numeric telemetry.
