MIDWAY POINT: NASA’s $1.1 billion Juno mission reached the midpoint in its circuitous, 1.76 billion-mi. journey to Jupiter on Aug. 12. With an anticipated arrival at Jupiter of July 4, 2016, the spacecraft will maneuver into a polar orbit to probe the structure and atmosphere below the cloud cover and search for evidence of a solid core. Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011, and will fly past the Earth in October of this year for a gravity boost.
A NASA-assembled Science Definition Team (SDT) is backing a Europa lander as the centerpiece for a U.S. mission to assess the habitability of the ice-covered Jovian moon. Top lander mission priorities should include an investigation of the composition and chemistry of the ocean beneath Europa’s vast ice shell; characterization of the thickness, uniformity and dynamics of the ice layer; and studies of Europa’s human-scale geology.
A budget crunch brought on by sequestration has pressured the U.S. Air Force to discontinue operations of its Space Fence, which has been surveilling objects in space since 1961. The Air Force Space Surveillance System (AFSSS), dubbed the Space Fence (and formerly operated by the Navy), consists of three transmitters and six receivers designed to form a radar line, or fence, across the 33rd parallel along the southern U.S.
Visiona Tecnologia Espacial S.A. has selected satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy and launch services provider Arianespace of Evry, France, to build and launch a geostationary broadband satellite system for the government of Brazil. Sao Jose dos Campos-based Visiona, a joint venture between Embraer and Telebras, was established to integrate Brazil’s Geostationary Satellite Defense and Strategic Communications (SGDC) system in support of the government’s National Broad Band Program (PNBL) and strategic defense communications.
LOGAN, Utah — The global groundswell of cubesat projects promises to generate more data than the ad hoc communications systems originally devised for the tiny spacecraft can handle, and the community is working on how to accommodate the flow. The issue is expected to become more critical as the short-lived cubesats launched by universities, government labs and private companies worldwide give way to swarms of tiny spacecraft carrying cameras, telescopes and other high-data sensors.
LOGAN, Utah - ATK will develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever flown for the planned Stratolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle (ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. (Image: Stratolaunch)
HOUSTON — Michael Foale, long NASA’s most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spaceflights. One of them—a 145-day flight to Russia’s former Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a harrowing collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 command of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale became the first American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.
Rockwell Collins’ largest acquisition to date—purchasing communications and systems engineering provider, Arinc, for $1.39 billion from the Carlyle Group—will give the avionics maker its own end-to-end communications link between the ground and the flight deck, a connection that is fundamental to the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).
FLYING FIRE: NASA plans to fly an experimental fire safety payload aboard Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Cygnus during one of the cargo spacecraft’s planned visits to the International Space Station in mid-2015. Known as the Spacecraft Fire Experiment (Saffire), the effort is aimed at improving spacecraft fire safety for future space exploration vehicles. Built by NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Saffire will test the flammability of large samples of various types of materials in microgravity.
Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy says it will no longer advertise certain variants of its Spacebus 4000 communications satellite as free of components and materials controlled by the U.S. Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
HOUSTON — International Space Station astronaut Karen Nyberg successfully grappled Japan’s unpiloted H-II transfer vehicle (HTV-4) early Aug. 9 using the orbiting lab’s Canadian robot arm. NASA ground control teams then took over the robotic operations to berth the 33-ft.-long freighter and its 3.6 tons of cargo to the U.S. segment after the initial capture.
Boeing controllers in California are operating the newest Wideband Global Satcom (WGS-6) military communications satellite following its launch on a Delta IV Aug. 7.
A National Research Council panel is calling on policymakers to establish a sustained and enhanced land imaging program to ensure data continuity from the 40-year Landsat effort. Stable follow-on efforts would end a chaotic history of federal oversight of Landsat, while assuring spacecraft continuity, technically advanced sensors and data management, and the widest possible distribution of the imagery, according to the panel’s Aug. 8 report.
Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope point to highly energetic mergers of binary neutron stars or neutron/black hole pairs as the source of mysterious, short-duration gamma-ray bursts. The findings, published online Aug. 3 in the journal Nature, address a mystery dating to the detection of powerful but unsourced gamma-ray flashes by U.S. Vela satellites placed in Earth orbit during the 1960s to document violations of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (signed by the U.S., the former USSR and the U.K.).
MAVEN PREPARED: NASA’s next Mars spacecraft is at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., being prepared for its November launch aboard at Atlas V -401 rocket. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) spacecraft was flown to Kennedy on Aug. 2 from Buckley AFB, Colo., near Lockheed Martin’s facility in Littleton, where it was built.
Boeing’s 702 Small Platform electric satellite series has cleared its critical design review, permitting the first spacecraft to move into the assembly phase and remain on schedule for launch in the first quarter of 2015.
Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver, who has been a policy lightning rod at agency headquarters as the Obama administration worked to shift U.S. human spaceflight from a government-run operation to a commercial venture, has resigned to take a job as general manager of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot, the agency’s No. 3 manager and top-ranking civil servant, is a likely possibility to fill Garver’s post on an acting basis until the White House can nominate another political appointee.
Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver, a policy lightning rod at agency headquarters as the Obama administration worked to shift U.S. human spaceflight from a government-run operation to a commercial venture, has resigned to take a job as general manager of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) expect to greet the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s HTV-4 early Aug. 9, following the unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft’s successful weekend liftoff from the Tanageshima Launch Center.
WGS WINDOW: The U.S. Air Force is anticipating a launch window for its sixth Boeing Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) spacecraft of 49 min. starting at 8:29 a.m. EDT Aug. 7. The satellite, which will provide high-bandwidth data and voice communications for U.S. and Australian forces, will be lofted by a United Launch Alliance Delta IV with four solid-rocket motors and a 5-meter fairing, from Cape Canaveral.WGS-6 is the final “Block 2” standard satellite, which includes a bypass to allow for quick transfer of video data collected by unmanned aircraft.
A Lunar X-Prize contender plans to mount a commercial mission to the Moon as a step toward a private lunar sample-return flight around 2020 and ultimately, perhaps, lunar mining for water and valuable minerals. Moon Express Inc.—a strong contender in the $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize competition—says it will mount a follow-on mission to the Moon's south pole in partnership with the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), one of the piggyback customers for its X-Prize entry.
