HOUSTON — An eight-year, $120 million overhaul of the world’s largest cryogenically controlled thermal vacuum chamber will soon be completed to support NASA’s $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
DMC International Imaging (DMCii) is helping The Algerian Space Agency (ASAL) to predict the spread of locust plagues across North Africa as part of a pro-active approach to tackle the destructive phenomenon using satellite imagery.
PARIS — France’s council of ministers on April 3 appointed Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall to head French space agency CNES. France is the chief stakeholder in Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium, which operates the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, the Vega light launcher and a European variant of Russia’s Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou. Arianespace also manages commercial Soyuz launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan through its Russian Starsem affiliate.
HOUSTON — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station, working with NASA’s Mission Control, expect to complete a major overhaul of the orbiting science laboratory’s Ku-band communications system to enhance scientific research activities by the end of next week.
COLORADO AEROSPACE: Two U.S. lawmakers from space-industry-heavy Colorado are standing up their own “working group” on aerospace export control reforms. After being part of the advocacy effort for loosening satellite-related regulations, the lawmakers say their new group will continue to look for more changes “that will help U.S. companies export their products and technologies to international customers while still protecting our national security interests.” The group will provide recommendations to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet and Republican Rep.
Surrey Satellite Technology U.S. LLC, a subsidiary of small-satellite pioneer Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. in the U.K., has opened a dedicated manufacturing and mission operations center in Colorado to handle its growing U.S. customer base. Located in Englewood, Colo., near Denver, the facility includes clean rooms for spacecraft and component manufacturing, customer-payload integration and electronics assembly. The center also houses engineering office space, test facilities and a control center for the spacecraft it produces.
NASA installations are vulnerable to catastrophic loss of life and injury, damage to facilities, equipment and the environment as well as loss of mission capabilities due to lapses within the agency’s Explosives Safety Program, according to the agency’s Inspector General (IG). Problems stem from management complacency and a lack of resources, training and record keeping, IG Paul Martin cautions in a March 27 report.
HOUSTON — Russia’s express crew mission to the International Space Station succeeded late March 28, as the Soyuz TMA-08M capsule carrying two cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut docked to the orbiting science lab within 6 hr. of liftoff. A second Soyuz crew will attempt to duplicate the fast-track transit in May, as the ISS partnership assesses the merits and challenges of routinely expediting what is normally a 34-orbit journey over two days for ISS astronauts in the close confines of the venerable Russian capsules.
An article on page 54 of the March 18 issue should have said the December 2010 launch failure that led to the loss of three Russian Glonass satellites was due to overfueling of the Proton rocket's Energia-built Block DM-03 upper stage, while a manufacturing defect in the Breeze M upper-stage helium pressurization system led to the loss of Russia's Express-MD2 and the Indonesian Telkom-3 satellites.
Lawmakers came up with a budget penalty bad enough to prompt themselves to deal with taxes and entitlements. Until now, the consequences of the $85 billion budget penalty known as sequestration were largely an academic exercise, but the looming closure of FAA contract towers is already making that tangible (see p. 18).
A new NASA mission to bring an asteroid closer to Earth in time to meet President Obama's goal of landing humans on one by 2025 would do more than bring the mountain to Mohammed. It also would add relevance to some of lawmakers' favorite NASA programs—the Orion crew vehicle, heavy-lift Space Launch System and commercial human spacecraft. NASA's fiscal 2014 budget request will include $100 million for the mission to find a small asteroid, capture it with a robotic spacecraft and bring it into range of human explorers somewhere in the vicinity of the Moon.
The U.S. Air Force could clear the Delta IV rocket for flight as soon as May as an investigation into a mishap with the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RL10B-2 upper stage winds down.
To counter the mounting number of cyberattacks, a group of senators led by Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) are working on legislation urging the Pentagon to train members of the National Guard to respond to cyberthreats. The bill would establish Cyber Guard units in every state that could be activated by governors or the Defense Secretary and would draw on the private-sector information technology expertise of members of the National Guard. The bill is aimed at offsetting a shortage of cyberexperts across the government.
U.S. and Russian astronauts, strapped in Russia’s Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft, lifted off late March 28 on the first “expedited” rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station, a four-orbit, 6-hr. transit that mission managers will evaluate as a replacement for the standard two-day voyage.
NASA’s fiscal 2014 budget request will include $100 million for a new mission to find a small asteroid, capture it with a robotic spacecraft and bring it into range of human explorers somewhere in the vicinity of the Moon.
An International Launch Systems Proton rocket orbited Satmex 8 in a 9-hr., 13-min. mission flying from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan late March 26, putting the big Russian rocket back in business after a Dec. 8 anomaly left a Russian telecom satellite in a low orbit. Liftoff of the Proton/Briz M stack came at 3:07 p.m. EDT, and the upper stage placed the Space Systems/Loral bird in a geostationary transfer orbit after its standard five-burn flight profile.
