NASA is casting a wide net as it offers research opportunities aboard the U.S. segment of the International Space Station to small businesses, industry, academia and other governmental agencies for projects with the potential to advance technologies critical to space exploration. Those technologies include in-space propulsion, space power and energy storage, closed-loop life support, thermal control, robotics and telerobotics, and automated systems.
NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) constellation is scheduled to receive its first on-orbit update in a decade on Jan. 30, sustaining the workhorse fleet as demands for its services continue to grow. TDRS-K, the first of three third-generation TDRSS birds, is scheduled to lift off at 8:52 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral on an Atlas V 401 with a 4-meter-dia. (13-ft.) fairing to contain the large, folded single-access antennas that deliver two-way high-data-rate service.
HUTCHISON HONORED: The Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation has selected Kay Bailey Hutchison, who influenced U.S. space policy as a member of the U.S. Senate from Texas for two decades, as the 2013 recipient of the National Space Trophy. Hutchison, who retired in January, led efforts to designate U.S. elements of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory, opening access to non-NASA researchers.
PARIS — European Space Agency Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain says the agency will have a lot on its plate in the year ahead, with plans to loft 12 spacecraft atop eight rockets on a launch manifest that includes four fully operational Galileo navigation satellites and the European Union’s first Sentinel Earth-monitoring mission. “We’ve got a lot to launch and it is going to be difficult to get everything up,” Dordain said Jan. 24 at a press conference detailing ESA’s €4.28 billion ($5.7 billion) spending plan for 2013.
HOUSTON — Perhaps as much as NASA’s higher-profile commercial crew and cargo initiatives, smaller projects like UTC Aerospace Systems’ Sabatier Reactor System (SRS) aboard the International Space Station are helping to open new business vistas in space for the private sector.
PARIS — The launch of Europe’s Swarm Earth explorer mission atop a Russian Rokot is on hold as Moscow looks into the cause of a January launch mishap involving the vehicle’s Briz KM upper stage.
PARIS — German aerospace center DLR is moving ahead with its Sharp Edged Flight Experiment (Shefex) hypersonic demonstrator, a project that aims to validate a subscale version of an operational reentry vehicle that could fly at speeds of Mach 20-24. DLR Chairman Johann-Dietrich Woerner says the agency was prepared to sign a contract Jan. 24 with EADS-Astrium Space Transportation GmbH of Bremen, Germany, to begin work on the €20 million ($26 million) project under an agreement that could culminate in a flight test by 2016.
North Korea said last week it would conduct its third nuclear test and continue long-range missile trials designed to reach the U.S. just as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was gearing up for a long-awaited return to flight of the system designed to protect the U.S. homeland from such an attack. The vow came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a Washington-backed set of sanctions for Pyongyang in response to its December rocket launch.
When safety issues arise with products used by millions of Americans, Congress is often quick to exercise its oversight role. But for the most part, lawmakers are willing to let the FAA and Boeing take time to discover just what caused the 787 battery fires that have grounded the fledgling fleet (see page 30). Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee who plans to retire in 2014, is one exception. He had a brief outburst last week pressing for congressional inquiry into the matter.
As the development of Stratolaunch's Air Launch and Scaled Composites' WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft shows, the use of wing-borne platforms for delivering rockets to orbit is set to grow as the industry strives for lower launch costs. However, unlike the latest purpose-built air launchers, which build on the experience gained over the years of proven mothership vehicles such as the Boeing B-52 and Orbital Sciences' Lockheed L-1011, a newly unveiled NASA air launch concept differs in one major aspect in that it has no engines.
NASA's loss is Boeing's gain, as former space shuttle program manager John Shannon retires to head up the company's International Space Station program. “It is really great to be back in an operational program again,” Shannon says. Not so great for his space-agency bosses, who continue to see rising stars bail out while Congress and the White House squabble over NASA's future.
As the Boeing 787 fleet remains grounded due to safety issues with its lithium-ion batteries, the Joint Strike Fighter program office is not saying whether the issue will prompt any review of the F-35's electrical system, which incorporates a lithium-ion battery that is larger and higher-voltage than the 787's and has a once-per-sortie charge/discharge cycle. Made by a U.S. subsidiary of France's Saft, the JSF battery is the only onboard means of starting the fighter's integrated power pack, which starts the engine.
HOT-FIRE: Orbital Sciences Corp. engineers are preparing for a static first-stage test of the company’s Antares liquid-fuel rocket next month, with only one wet dress rehearsal to go before the on-pad test at Wallops Flight Facility, Va. A month to six weeks after that test, the company plans to launch an Antares with an instrumented test version of its Cygnus cargo carrier. And if that test flight goes well, first flight of an Antares/Cygnus stack to a grapple-and-berth linkup with the International Space Station in May or June, depending on ISS scheduling.
John Shannon, the NASA human spaceflight manager who restored space shuttle operations after the disastrous Columbia crash, has joined Boeing as its International Space Station program manager. As the shuttle program wound down and the historic orbiters were prepared for museum display, Shannon oversaw secretive exploration-architecture studies in the headquarters Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) mission directorate. Some considered him a logical choice to eventually succeed William Gerstenmaier as the associate administrator for HEO.
DARK PARTNERS: NASA will join the European Space Agency’s effort to learn more about mysterious dark matter and dark energy in the Universe, supplying hardware and scientists to ESA’s planned Euclid mission. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will deliver 16 advanced infrared detectors and four spares for one of the two instruments planned for Euclid, a space telescope designed to operate at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), following launch in 2020.
BEIJING — China estimates it will account for about 30% of the world’s space launches for the rest of the decade, more than doubling its recent launch pace, according to national space group CASC.
