CROWD SOURCING: Planetary Resources, which has been busy developing an initial prototype of its prospective space telescope, the Arkyd-100, is going public with a pitch for so-called crowd-sourcing of its project — i.e., public donations. The group has unveiled a $1 million fund-raising campaign to launch the telescope, set up a user interface system, “cover fulfillment costs for all of the products and services in the pledge levels,” and fund the “immersive” education program the company is promising.
John C. Bierwirth, who led the Grumman Corp. in the 1970s and '80s through the development of the U.S. Navy's F-14 fighter and other military aircraft, NASA space shuttle and space station work, and various diversification efforts, died May 26 in a hospice on Long Island, N.Y., of congestive heart failure. He was 89.
The International Space Station (ISS) returned to a six-person crew May 28 with a second Soyuz “express” mission. The Russian capsule docked with the orbiting science lab at 10:10 p.m. EDT—less than 6 hr. after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (shown)—delivering veteran cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Luca Parmitano of Italy.
The 50th Paris air show will offer French space agency CNES an opportunity to detail engineering tradeoffs being weighed as it designs a leaner, more cost-effective successor to Europe's Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket. The new launcher is expected to fly in 2020, assuming European Space Agency (ESA) governments approve the estimated €4 billion ($5.2 billion) project at a meeting of ESA ministers slated for 2014.
A micrometeoroid might be the culprit for an abrupt attitude problem that halted the flow of critical weather-prediction data for the U.S. East Coast from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite.
Globally, aerospace and defense merger and acquisition activity has been slow for quite awhile, but Curtis Reusser and Mike Dumais have had plenty to do. They have been heading integration teams for the exception to that rule—the new business unit created by United Technologies' $18.4 billion purchase of Goodrich Aerospace last September.
LAUNCH SURVEY: The U.S. Air Force is surveying industry bidders on their near- and long-term plans to offer national security launch services, as well as what companies see as critical issues in providing this capability, recommendations for changes to Pentagon policy — especially in helping to lower launch costs — and how Defense Department acquisitions could help stabilize the industrial base. Comments are sought by June 21 for the ongoing strategic National Security Space Launch Assessment, according to a May 29 notice in the Federal Register.
With just more than 2 1/2 half years remaining for teams in the Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP) contest to successfully land on the Moon and claim up to $30 million in prizes, organizers say a group of leading contenders is starting to emerge.
The second express Russian Soyuz mission to the International Space Station restored the outpost to six-crewmember operations late March 28, after the capsule docked to deliver veteran cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and the European Space Agency’s Luca Parmitano.
SAN DIEGO — Ambitious plans for an internationally developed space solar power (SSP) system to provide energy on a global scale by the middle of the century have been unveiled by space pioneer, humanitarian and former Indian President Abdul Kalam.
NASA may be overreaching in its more than $200 million cleanup plans for the Santa Susana Field Laboratory 30 mi. northwest of Los Angeles, which for decades was used by the Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force and the space agency for nuclear energy research and rocket testing, according to NASA Inspector General Paul Martin. The cleanup is projected to drive NASA’s otherwise little-noticed Environmental Compliance and Restoration budget line from $45 million in 2012 to $75.5 million annually through 2018.
STEM CELLS: The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (Casis) is seeking proposals for using International Space Station facilities to study how microgravity affects the growth, division and differentiation of non-embryonic mammalian stem cells. Casis says it will provide grants, coordinate flight opportunities and locate potential partners for winning proposals. The non-profit organization, set up by Congress to operate the public U.S.
Large aerospace and defense (A&D) companies are getting out in front of government budget cuts by cutting costs, shedding excess capacity and trimming their workforces, and the payoff has been higher profit margins, according to the new results from Aviation Week’s Top-Performing Companies study.
HOUSTON — The European Space Agency’s (ESA) unpiloted Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4) the Albert Einstein, is expected to have no difficulty berthing with the International Space Station (ISS) in mid-June, but the station’s mission management team has approved a response strategy just in case Russia’s Progress 51 cargo capsule imparted damage as it docked with an undeployed navigation antenna early April 26.
These satellite images, taken less than a month apart by France's new Pleiades optical-imaging spacecraft, show the mile-wide trail of devastation left by the EF5 tornado that tore through Moore, Okla., on May 20. The image on the left was collected on April 29, and the one on the right on May 23.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is taking the unusual measure of activating an in-orbit Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) spare as experts try to rescue the primary spacecraft, which that has failed to transmit imaging and sounding data for a second time in less than a year.
