HOUSTON — NASA’s ambitious plans to identify and retrieve a small asteroid and park it near the Moon for a visit by U.S. astronauts as early as 2021 would require a twofold improvement in solar electric propulsion (SEP) technologies, according to NASA. Efforts to improve SEP were under way well ahead of the yet-to-be-priced asteroid mission featured in President Barack Obama’s proposed $17.7 billion space agency budget for 2014, NASA says.
NASA’s proposed mission to wrangle an asteroid into lunar orbit would marry the embattled space agency’s disparate programs while providing the foundation for humans to move beyond low Earth orbit, according to a key official’s remarks on Capitol Hill.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Inspiration Mars, the bold plan to send a man and woman on a 501-day trip around the Red Planet beginning in January 2018, reports individuals and industry are offering their services for the task, including “hundreds” of couples who have qualifications that would put them in the running.
NO CONFLICT: French Prime Minster Jean-Marc Ayrault says there is no conflict between a new Europeanized variant of Soyuz and France’s plan to introduce a lighter, more modular successor to its Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher, which will ultimately eliminate Europe’s need for the Russian medium-lift rocket.
After a decade of multibillion-dollar cost overruns and delays in delivering satellites, it seems the U.S. Air Force can claim that it has finally averted a potential disaster—at least for now—on its next big satellite program.
Boeing is developing a family of small satellites—from 4-1,000 kg (8.8-2,204 lb.) in size—to whet the growing appetites of commercial and government customers interested in lower-cost space platforms. This small satellite market, potentially worth billions in the next 10 years, is “coming of age,” says Alex Lopez, vice president of advanced network and space systems at Boeing. The company has yet to get a committed customer.
As Jean-Yves Le Gall takes the helm at French space agency CNES this month, he leaves behind a 12-year tenure as head of European launch consortium Arianespace, a legacy that began shortly before the 2002 failure of an Ariane 5 rocket left the launch vehicle's future in doubt. Since then, Ariane 5 has launched 54 consecutive times without failure from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, a track record unrivaled by U.S. rockets and one that has allowed Arianespace to capture more than half the world's commercial launch market today.
As U.S. defense priorities change, Lockheed Martin Space Systems is renewing a strategy that it has used for years: tapping into Silicon Valley's penchant for sharing ideas.
NASA's Chris Cassidy, newly arrived flight engineer on Expedition 35 to the International Space Station (ISS), is at the cutting edge of mankind's space endeavor as he uses the Minus Eighty-degree Freezer in Japan's Kibo lab module to store research samples. The work Cassidy and other station astronauts do in the coming decade is likely to shape how far, and how fast, humans will move into the Solar System.
The range of channels broadcasting across sub-Saharan Africa via the Eutelsat 16A satellite has further increased with the launch of Eurochannel, the international TV channel dedicated to European films and series.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Orbital Sciences Corp. believes it can sell space on the commercial cargo vehicle it has developed with NASA seed money as an orbiting laboratory once it is unloaded and unberthed from the International Space Station. The Orbital Sciences Antares medium-lift launch vehicle set for its inaugural flight next week won’t carry the Cygnus capsule developed to deliver cargo to the ISS, but the instrumented mass simulator it is set to place in orbit will remain there for several months before re-entering the atmosphere.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is working toward a full-scale turbomachinery test next year of the F-1B kerosene fueled rocket engine it is developing with Dynetics as a potential power plant for the advanced side-mounted boosters NASA will need to meet the 130-metric-ton congressional requirement for its planned Space Launch System.
GeoMetWatch will mount its first hyperspectral hosted payload on an AsiaSat commercial communications satellite set for launch in 2016, giving the Utah-based startup a view of the Asia/Pacific region for its weather-data service. The new spacecraft will be positioned at 122 deg. E. Long., where the Hong Kong-based satellite operator’s AsiaSat 4 is located today.
The White House is requesting $2 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) weather satellite programs in fiscal 2014, boosting funding for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite System (GOES-R) while trimming back the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). The moves are in line with the criticisms of an external review panel that last year deemed the agency’s satellite efforts “dysfunctional.” The White House is asking for $5.448 billion overall for NOAA in fiscal 2014.
Though part of NASA’s top-funded science directorate, the agency’s planetary exploration budget suffers a sustained, pre-sequester 20% reduction in the Obama administration’s 2014 budget proposal and its outyear projections.
Establishing a U.S. human commercial space transportation capability by 2017 will require more than $821 million annually for the next three years if the initiative is to achieve the White House’s goal, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden emphasized as the fiscal 2014 budget request went to Capitol Hill today. Commercial crew is to receive $525 million under the 2013 budget continuing resolution, up from just more than $400 million in NASA’s 2012 budget.
COLORADO SPRINGS — After a decade of multibillion-dollar cost overruns and delays in delivering satellites, it seems the U.S. Air Force can claim that it has finally averted a potential disaster—at least for now—on its next big satellite program.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is nearly finished negotiating the details of its first two contracts providing launch services to the U.S. Air Force. Talks for its Falcon 9 v1.1 launch of NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr) satellite and a Falcon Heavy flight lofting the Air Force’s Space Test Program (STP-2) satellite should be wrapped up by the end of the month, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell tells Aviation Week. Dscovr is slated to boost in November 2014, with STP-2 to follow in September 2015.
NASA spending rises to a pre-sequestration level of $17.7 billion under President Barack Obama’s proposed 2014 budget and holds steady in outyear projections, essentially casting off the current fiscal year deficit-reducing rollback to fuel an accelerated asteroid encounter by astronauts.
COLORADO SPRINGS — The senior officer overseeing U.S. Air Force Space Command says he refuses to lose sight of looking toward a future of more resilient architectures for spacecraft and launchers, though the near-term focus is on slicing $508 million from its operations and maintenance budget through the end of September.
