Government satellite operators in the U.K. and Mexico are taking delivery of two large telecommunications satellites following the night launch of the 10th Ariane V mission this year. Liftoff of the big European rocket came at 4:49 p.m. EST (6:49 p.m. local time) Wednesday from the European launch center at Kourou, French Guiana. On board were Skynet 5D and Mexsat Bicentenario.
ANOTHER TRY: The U.S. Air Force is planning to use the RL10B-2 engine for a late February flight of the fifth Wideband Global Satcom satellite on a Delta IV rocket, according to Dave Madden, who directs the Air Force’s military satellite communications system program office. The Delta IV, which uses the RL10B-2 to power the upper stage, malfunctioned during an Oct. 8 GPS IIF launch and has not flown since. Air Force officials have yet to find a root cause for the low-thrust anomaly.
Doubts still hang over the military utility of small satellites, holding back progress on low-cost, quick-reaction systems that could be launched at short notice to fill gaps in space coverage. To prove their viability, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has begun a program to demonstrate that small satellites produced and launched on demand can provide imagery on request directly to individual soldiers.
HOUSTON — A Russian Soyuz rocket reached orbit early Dec. 19 with a three-man multinational crew that includes veteran astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is scheduled to become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station in mid-March. The Soyuz TMA-07M capsule carrying cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Hadfield was on course to dock with the 256-mi.-high station’s Rassvet module on Dec. 21 at 9:12 a.m., EST.
NASA’s fuel-depleted Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) A and B lunar mission probes slammed into a mountain near Goldschmidt crater at the Moon’s North Pole late Dec. 17, ending a one-year mission. The carefully targeted impact of the two washing machine-sized spacecraft, renamed Ebb and Flow, occurred on schedule, with Ebb striking first at 5:28 p.m. EST, and Flow striking 32 sec. later. The spacecraft impacted the Moon at 3,800 mph.
NEW DELHI — The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to undertake 10 space missions in 2013, including its first Mars orbiter. “Of these, eight missions will be launched by September 2013 and the remaining by year-end,” says V. Narayanasamy, a junior minister in the prime minister’s office, which is in charge of space administration.
After a long delay, board members for the non-profit organization set up to organize and promote use of the U.S. National Laboratory on the International Space Station were finally appointed. In order to make up for lost time, they are scheduling weekly meetings by telephone.
SPACE PRIORITIES: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), incoming chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, is looking for programs that inspire the public. During a recent hearing on NASA, a key space-policy adviser may have provided clues to the new chairman‘s priorities. “People have an interest in life,” says Scott Pace, the head of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
Senior NASA managers and their White House overseers are pondering whether it might be politically possible to mount a near-term mission to capture a small asteroid and reposition it in orbit around the Moon, where it could serve as a proving ground for hardware and crews en route to larger objects deeper into space.
In 2004, the Joint Strike Fighter's program manager, Lockheed Martin Vice President Tom Burbage, observed that if any one big defense program falters, the rippling effects impact all programs.
After 14 years of trying, North Korea has finally joined the countries capable of launching a satellite into orbit. But the success was short-lived. The nation's space program is also experiencing the bitterness of the failure to keep its spacecraft stable. North Korea succeeded Dec. 11 on its six attempt to orbit what officials there call an Earth-observation satellite. The U.S. led a group of nations, including Russia and China, that warned North Korea not to proceed with the mission. China has since expressed “regret” over it.
A small engineering firm on Florida's Space Coast is looking to recover some of the revenue and jobs the region lost with retirement of the space shuttle fleet by offering maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services to the commercial spaceflight industry that the Obama administration hopes will take the shuttle's place.
Amy Svitak (London), Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington)
Thales Alenia Space and Gazprom Space Systems are confident that efforts to recover Russia's Yamal 402 Ku-band commercial telecom satellite will succeed, but it remains unclear how much of the spacecraft's 15-year service life will be lost. A premature shutdown of the Briz M upper stage on its International Launch Services (ILS) launch vehicle Dec. 9 left Yamal 402 in the wrong orbit, and controllers are using its onboard station-keeping/attitude control propellant to adjust it.
NASA will spend the next 16 months nailing down exactly how its three commercial crew contractors plan to meet the agency's detailed requirements for flying astronauts to the International Space Station and bringing them back to Earth in one piece. The agency will spend almost $30 million with the three companies—Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX—on the first phase of the “certification products contracts” (CPC) that will bring the vehicle designs they are developing into line with NASA's formal safety requirements.
A probe into an upper-stage low-thrust anomaly during an October GPS launch has verified that a leak occurred in the RL10B-2 engine. But, a root cause continues to elude investigators, and satellite owners are proceeding with Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) missions only if they are willing to accept any extra risk resulting from the unknowns surrounding the incident.
NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory A and B lunar mission spacecraft are scheduled for a violent but potentially scientifically productive end as they carry out a controlled plummet into a mountain ridge near the Moon’s north pole on Dec. 17. The impacts, within seconds of one another at 5:28 p.m. EST, will be monitored by ultraviolet sensors on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for the presence of water vapor and other potential volatiles in lunar soil exposed to long periods of sunlight.
A new, satellite-based, 8-hr. weather forecast prototype covering remote areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is available to industry as a research tool on the website for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
