LOS ANGELES — Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser engineering test article (ETA) is being reassembled at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, Calif., in preparation for the start of approach-and-landing flight tests later this summer. Sierra Nevada is competing with the lifting body vehicle against alternative capsule designs developed by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Boeing for NASA’s commercial crew program under a $212.5 million Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) contract awarded last August.
HOUSTON — Developers report a favorable conclusion to the first phase of the long-running Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) under way outside the International Space Station, the joint NASA/Canadian Space Agency initiative intended to demonstrate technologies to extend the operations of aging satellites.
HOUSTON — Canada’s first space mission command came to a successful close late May 13, as a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Canada’s Chris Hadfield, U.S. astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko departed the International Space Station and descended safely to Earth. Their TMA-07M capsule landed under parachute in southern Kazakhstan at 9:31 p.m. EDT, or May 14 at 8:31 a.m. local time, ending a 146-day mission.
A time-management trick learned by the Skylab 4 crew almost 40 years ago continues to work on the International Space Station today, according to commanders of missions on each orbital laboratory. Gerald Carr, the Skylab 4 commander, told an audience marking the 40th anniversary of the Apollo-era space-station program that his three-man crew held “the first sensitivity group in space” after controllers in Houston overloaded them with work.
HOUSTON — Two U.S. astronauts were preparing for a possible May 11 spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) in response to a significant ammonia coolant leak in the thermal control system radiator of the orbiting lab’s oldest solar power module. The NASA-led ISS Mission Management Team had scheduled a meeting for late May 10 to consider final approval for a 6-7-hr. extravehicular activity (EVA) to replace the suspected source of the leak, a pump and flow control system (PFCS) electronics box, or to carry out further troubleshooting.
LOS ANGELES — U.S. Air Force efforts to improve space systems acquisition are showing clear dividends in terms of enhanced operations and cost savings, according to Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center Commander Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski.
The search for evidence of life on alien planets is likely to move closer to Earth, involve greater coordination among more capable space and ground-based observatories and require technologies that can detect the presence of oxygen in distant atmospheres, according to exoplanet experts.
Europe’s Vega light launcher lifted off late May 6 with the European Space Agency’s Proba-V Earth-observation satellite and smaller spacecraft for Vietnam and Estonia, overcoming a weather delay at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana to go two-for-two in successful launches. Liftoff into a 1-sec. window came at 11:06 p.m. local time (10:06 p.m. EDT) Monday, following a weather scrub at the same time on May 3.
Crewmembers on the International Space Station have been experimenting with the use of ultrasound scans to image their spines, a new application for the technology that could prove useful on the ground as well. Briefing members of the Senate Commerce space subcommittee Tuesday, Expedition 35 Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn said the ultrasound instrument can help flight surgeons learn about the sometimes painful spinal recompression experienced by spacefarers when they return to gravity.
SPACEX LEASE: SpaceX signed a three-year lease for land and facilities at New Mexico’s Spaceport America for flight testing its reusable Grasshopper vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket. Gov. Susana Martinez announced the agreement Tuesday, noting that the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company wants to expand its test envelope now that it has completed low altitude tests at its facility in McGregor, Texas.
The launch of the European Space Agency (ESA) Proba-V Earth observation satellite atop a Vega light launcher was scrubbed May 3 due to unfavorable weather over the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s equatorial spaceport in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America. The mission, which was constrained to a 1-sec. launch window at 11:06:31 p.m. local time, is also carrying Vietnam’s VNREDSat-1 Earth observation spacecraft and the ESTCube-1 solar-sail demonstrator for Estonia.
U.S. China-watchers believe the U.S. can expand cooperation with China in space without harming national security, and in fact ease the tense relationship in a manner comparable to the approach President Richard Nixon used in the run-up to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.
Inexpensive satellites little bigger than a Rubik's Cube have been the provenance of university and small research projects for more than a decade. Increasingly, innovations from the smartphone world are showing how these classroom projects can play outsized roles in space science.
NEW DELHI — India’s space agency has plans to start a new facility for production of cryogenic engines and components for its future rockets. The cryogenic engine manufacturing unit, to be established at the aerospace division of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) in Bengaluru three years from now, is estimated to cost around $25 million (1.4 billion rupees), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief K. Radhakrishnan says.
