Two demonstration Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) satellites, built by Northrop Grumman, captured these infrared images of a ballistic missile intercept from their low Earth orbit. In 2009, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) lofted the two STSS satellites, developed under the then-Space-Based Infrared System-low program, to explore whether orbiting spacecraft could be used to track warheads in mid-flight.
Jerry Grey has taught engineering at Princeton University and been science and policy director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Aviation Week's 2012 Workforce Study data come from respondents that collectively employ 80% of the A&D industry's workforce of 624,000. Newcomers to this year's study include Alenia Aermacchi North America and Acutec Precision Machining.
LOGAN, Utah — Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology used to make parts for high-performance race cars is being applied to the tricky problem of propulsion for cubesats and other small spacecraft that are typically launched as secondary payloads. Matthew Dushku, head of the Experiment Propulsion Lab here, has tested a hybrid rocket motor created with a 3-D printing technique from Windform XT 2.0, a picocarbon reinforced nylon material that can be laid up in layers as a powder and hardened with a laser scanner.
PASADENA, Calif. — Even as more senior staffers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here begin to explore Mars with the state-of-the-art Curiosity rover, a group of scientists, engineers and neophyte managers in their 20s is preparing to use whatever is at hand to validate space-to-ground laser communications.
LOGAN, Utah — A growing market in the developing world for small satellites and demand for more capable orbital spacecraft like Darpa’s planned Phoenix testbed are behind ATK’s recent decision to broaden its line of small satellites.
GREEN FUEL: NASA has picked Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., to lead an orbital demonstration of a “green” spacecraft propellant alternative to hydrazine. While an efficient and storable propellant, hydrazine is highly corrosive and toxic. The team will develop and fly a high-performance green propellant, demonstrating and proving the performance of the integrated propulsion system. The agency’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission is expected to fly in about three years.
RUSSIAN LOSSES: A botched Russian launch junked two multimillion-dollar satellites last week that were to provide Indonesia and Russia with telecommunication services, adding to a series of failures that have dogged its space industry. Reuters reported that Russia’s space agency acknowledged the Aug. 7 failure of the upper stage of the launcher atop its workhorse Proton rocket. The error after takeoff from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan replicates a mishap that scrapped the $265 million Express AM-4 satellite last summer.
LOS ANGELES — NASA is on track to move the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover for the first time on the red planet’s surface around the middle of next week, according to controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Preparations for the move come midway through Sol 9 on Mars (Aug. 14), as the MSL team nears the halfway point in the lengthy process of checking out and commissioning the rover’s 10 major science instruments and other avionics and mechanical systems.
HOUSTON — NASA’s Morpheus team expects to assemble a second test vehicle from spare components and resume tethered test flights at Johnson Space Center by the end of 2012, following the prototype lander’s Aug. 9 crash during an untethered flight attempt at Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
NASA has issued a new call to researchers to flight test an array of space technologies on a variety of platforms ranging from the modified Boeing 727 Zero-G parabolic test aircraft to high-altitude balloons and reusable launch vehicles. The announcement is the fifth made by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which aims to develop key space technologies as well as help foster the growth of the reusable launch business. Proposals for the latest call are due by Sept. 21, with an initial announcement on selections possible as early as November.
NRO RETRY: The U.S. Air Force is eyeing Sept. 6 for the rescheduled launch of the National Reconnaissance Office’s latest classified satellite, NROL-36. Originally targeted for an Aug. 2 liftoff from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., the flight had to be postponed while engineers worked through a range instrumentation issue. The fixes for the range issues should be tested and certified by the end of this month, according to Atlas V rocket maker United Launch Alliance.
Three space-based experiments employing cubesats to demonstrate advanced communications and control techniques will share $22.6 million in NASA technology funding over the next three years. The agency’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program, funded through the Office of the Chief Technologist, picked proposals using the cubesat format based on 10 cubic cm. units, or Us, each weighing no more than 1.33 kg. All are scheduled to fly as secondary payloads in 2014-15.
LOGAN, Utah — The burgeoning demand for cubesat launches to orbit can easily be met by piggybacking on the commercial cargo spacecraft that soon will be visiting the International Space Station (ISS) regularly, according to an “Old Space” veteran who piggybacked with larger spacecraft three times.
The hair-raising 7-min. descent and high-precision landing of NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars last week (p. 24) provided a much-needed reinvigoration to a space agency that is struggling to stay relevant after last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet.
