PARIS — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced the appointment of Deputy Defense Minister Oleg Ostapenko to replace Vladimir Popovkin as head of Russian space agency Roscosmos. The Oct. 10 announcement comes as Moscow reviews proposals to centralize oversight of its space industry in an effort to curb government waste and restore confidence in the nation’s space program following a spate of spacecraft and launch vehicle failures in recent years (AWIN First, Oct. 9).
MARS SIM: The Mars Society is looking for six volunteers to participate as members of the crew of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) during a year-long simulation of a human Mars expedition set to take place in northern Canada starting in August 2014. The crew will conduct a sustained program of field exploration on Devon Island, 900 mi. from the North Pole, while operating under many of the same constraints that will be faced by explorers on an actual human Mars mission, according to the Mars Society.
PARIS — Moscow is reviewing a proposal to centralize its space industry in an effort to curb government waste and restore confidence in Russia’s space program following a spate of launch vehicle failures in recent years. The proposal was unveiled by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, during which Rogozin said a new state entity will be formed to centralize oversight of Russian production plants, leaving Russian space agency Roscosmos to serve as system integrator and procurement authority.
Swiss Space Systems (S3), a new commercial space company based in Payerne, Switzerland, will use the planned Colorado spaceport near Denver as the North American base for its air-launched Soar suborbital spaceplane. Under a preliminary agreement announced Oct. 8, Spaceport Colorado will be the U.S. home to S3’s converted A300, which will conduct dorsal launches of the Soar to deliver small satellites to orbit.
Officials at NASA’s Ames Research Center triggered a scientists’ boycott of a conference on the search for exoplanets with an inaccurate characterization of federal law governing access by Chinese nationals to NASA facilities, according to the lawmaker who wrote the law.
LOS ANGELES — Test pilots pushing Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) toward a planned suborbital space flight in the coming months report the vehicle is rugged and stable, without any of the potential transonic flutter issues that could have bedeviled the design.
LADEE ARRIVES: NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) has reached lunar orbit, one month after lifting off from Wallops Island, Va., on a Minotaur V solid-fuel rocket. Operated by a skeleton crew at Ames Research Center during the federal government shutdown, the 884-lb. orbiter fired its main engine early October 6 to enter an elliptical orbit. The orbit’s apogee will be lowered with subsequent burns to move the spacecraft into its commissioning orbit at 124-186 mi., where it will spend 40 days.
There always has been a clear objective for potential human space explorers who are alive today—Mars. After the lunar landings, the red planet was the next natural goal. If the papers presented in Beijing at the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) are an indication—and they are—nothing has changed in the subsequent 40 years.
Russia's Proton M launch vehicle returned to flight Sept. 30, nearly two months after a July 2 mishap sent the heavy-lift rocket and three Russian Glonass M satellites crashing to the ground at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet.
NASA has exempted the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) mission preparations from the federal government shutdown, primarily because the orbiter will be needed as a communications relay for the two rovers operating on the planet’s surface. Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder said in a post on the mission website that the agency “has analyzed the Maven mission relative to the Anti-Deficiency Act and determined that it meets the requirements allowing an emergency exception.”
Golden Spike is looking to 2015 for U.S. prime contractor selections to develop hardware for a series of $1.5 billion, two-person commercial lunar expeditions marketed primarily to foreign powers, industry and possibly a few wealthy adventurers.
NAVAL RESEARCH: The non-profit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space has awarded the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) a $250,000 grant to use the International Space Station’s hyperspectral imager to study halmful algal bloom in coastal areas around the world. Also known as red tide, the algal bloom releases toxins that are harmful to humans and marine life.
PRIME TIME: NBC plans to broadcast a reality TV competition called “Space Race” that will offer a flight to the edge of space on the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo to its winner. The U.S. network signed a deal with Virgin Galactic and One Three Media, which produced Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice and other “unscripted series.” The production team will have “unprecedented access” to Virgin’s operations at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and will begin distribution activities at an upcoming marketing conference in Cannes, France.
Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet. A scoop of geologic fines — dust and finely grained soil — collected for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite inside the rover body detected water molecules that someday may be recovered by astronauts practicing in situ resource utilization (ISRU).
At NASA, which celebrated its 55th anniversary by furloughing 97% of its workforce, concern is centered on two programs trying to stay on schedule for their launch windows.
STILL SPENDING: A U.S. government shutdown and debt ceiling fight on Capitol Hill notwithstanding, nominal federal spending plans for fiscal 2014 and beyond entail $117 billion in defense information technology (IT) contracting opportunities, according to federal IT consulting company Deltek. Another $38 billion will come from civilian agencies like NASA, FAA and others. Furthermore, despite a common industry complaint that budget caps in recent years have essentially derailed new-start programs, that is not the case. Deltek said in a webinar to clients Oct.
BEIJING — With the success of its high-resolution Pleiades optical imaging satellites, French space agency CNES is preparing a demonstration of a potential follow-on system that would launch in the early 2020s, most likely on a European Vega rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou. The OTOS technology demo, formerly known as CXCI, is the precursor to a dual system designed to capture up to 750 images per day per satellite at 20- to 30-cm ground resolution and a swath width of 15-20 km in panchromatic mode.
PARIS — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) says a new version of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle aborted a planned restart of its upper stage engine during an otherwise successful Sept. 29 debut of the upgraded rocket.
