Civil servants and contractors at NASA will have their wings clipped for the rest of the fiscal year by the automatic sequestration budget cuts that went into effect March 1, with sharp restrictions on travel to conferences and on training not considered essential to doing their jobs.
Cerebrotech Medical Systems Inc. hopes to develop a non-invasive sensor to monitor brain fluid changes believed responsible for vision changes detected in astronauts assigned to long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station.
AIR LAUNCH: A Payerne, Switzerland-based startup has joined with France’s Dassault, the European Space Agency and others to propose an air-launched, reusable, unpiloted space shuttle optimized for launching small satellites at low cost. Swiss Space Systems plans to use a vehicle based on Dassault Aviation’s Vehra airborne reusable hypersonic vehicle concept, and a throwaway upper stage, to orbit satellites weighing as much as 250 kg at altitudes of 600-800 km.
BEIJING — Development of two major derivatives of the DFH-4 satellite bus of Chinese spacecraft builder CAST is running ahead of work on the state manufacturer’s larger DFH-5 product, says a sibling marketing company.
BERLIN — Researchers at more than half a dozen European space institutes are working to build better tools to forecast the space weather patterns produced by the Earth’s Sun. Space weather events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) create streams of energetic particles that can adversely affect astronaut health, satellite operations and terrestrial power grids.
LOS ANGELES — Virgin Galactic says a series of final confirmation hot-fire tests of SpaceShipTwo’s RM2 hybrid rocket are under way at Mojave, Calif., in preparation for the start of powered test flights of its suborbital passenger vehicle.
Robust U.S. public support for the human exploration of Mars reflected in Explore Mars’s recent Mars Generation poll has probably not been changed by the subsequent spectacular explosion of a small asteroid over Russia, according to the national survey’s principal advocate.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has new whistleblower information of possible technology leaks from NASA to China, this time at Langley Research Center, and is seeking a federal criminal investigation of the charges.
Wyle Laboratories Inc., of Houston, will provide medical and biomedical support for a wide range of NASA human space exploration and research initiatives under a potential 10-year, $1.76 billion contract award announced March 4. The Human Health and Performance contract, which includes Lockheed Martin Services Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., as a major subcontractor, is effective May 1. The agreement includes a five-year base period and options for extensions through 2023.
HOUSTON — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were well into the unpacking of the SpaceX Dragon resupply capsule on March 4, after the mission successfully overcame post-launch thruster difficulties that delayed the rendezvous and berthing by a day. Station commander Kevin Ford, assisted by flight engineer Tom Marsburn, grappled the second SpaceX Dragon supply vessel with Canada’s 58-ft.-long robot arm on March 3 at 5:31 a.m. EST.
AT LAST: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has taken operational control of the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) weather satellite from NASA. Originally known as the Npoess Preparatory Project, NPP was conceived as a pathfinder for the ill-fated National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, an effort to merge civil and military weather satellite needs that was canceled due to massive cost overruns.
Dennis Tito's plan to send a crew of two around Mars is getting a big assist from NASA via a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with its Ames Research Center (see page 24). While Tito will repay NASA for its work, the agency's inspector general and a powerful member of Congress are examining SAAs—which are less restrictive than standard federal business arrangements—to see if they are being abused. That is one of the charges in a whistle-blower report on alleged malfeasance at Ames (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 19). Rep.
David S. McKay, a NASA planetary geologist who studied the soil and rock samples Apollo astronauts returned from the Moon and argued that a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica contained fossil evidence of extraterrestrial life, died in Houston Feb. 20 of heart disease. He was 76. McKay joined NASA in 1965. He trained Apollo 11 crewmembers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to help them return useful samples from the Moon's surface, and stood by in Mission Control during the first Moonwalk on July 20, 1969, as a resource.
Size can matter when it comes to prizes and, for one of last remaining competitions for human endeavor in flight, a significant boost in the purse has spurred a neck-and-neck race for the finish line. By the time these words are read, one of the longest-standing prizes in aviation could have been won, with two teams vying for the American Helicopter Society (AHS) International's $250,000 Sikorsky Prize for a human-powered helicopter.
