Students will be given the opportunity to send up small payloads, as well as fly up themselves, when suborbital commercial space flight becomes available as early as late 2013, according to some of the leading companies in the field. At an Aug. 1 hearing of the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and XCOR Aerospace all said they are counting researchers and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students among the projected clients for their vehicles.
A classified National Reconnaissance Office mission due for launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., just after midnight Aug. 2 has been scrubbed until at least Aug. 4 because of a downrange calibration issue. NROL-36 is to be lifted into orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V flying in its simplest configuration, with a 4-meter payload fairing, a single-motor Centaur upper stage and no boosters. That suggests a relatively small payload. Launch officials said there are no issues with either the rocket or the payload.
HOUSTON — A sprint to the International Space Station (ISS) may not suit everyone. On Aug. 1, Russia’s Progress 48 resupply mission lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:35 p.m. EDT on an ISS first: a four-orbit, 6-hr. trajectory that was to end with an automated docking of the unpiloted capsule at 9:24 p.m. EDT.
ATLANTA — With NASA wrapping up a decision on its next round of seed-money grants to help private companies develop vehicles to take its astronauts to the International Space Station, several of the bidders provided progress reports at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference here this week. NASA plans to announce its selections for Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements at 9 a.m. EDT Aug. 3.
LOS ANGELES and WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has awarded an array of contracts for the Phoenix program, which aims to demonstrate the salvage and reuse of components, such as antennas, from dead satellites. The cost-saving concept is based on creating new space resources by repurposing equipment already in geosynchronous orbit. To demonstrate the scheme, Darpa plans to piggyback payload orbital delivery system (PODS) devices on a sample commercial communications satellite in 2015-16.
WGS AWARD: Boeing has been awarded a contract for the 10th Wideband Global Satcom spacecraft by the U.S. Air Force in the last award of the current series of high-bandwidth communications spacecraft. The contract is valued at $338.7 million and continues an X- and Ka-band communications constellation that began in 2000. There have been four WGS launches thus far. The latest to reach orbit, WGS-4, was orbited in January and is currently undergoing acceptance testing. Boeing is building WGS-5-9 in a pulsed-line production process at its El Segundo, Calif., factory.
HOUSTON — After Russia’s Mission Control turned up the heat aboard the Progress 47 resupply craft, warming the erratic upgraded KURS-NA rendezvous system, the unpiloted freighter successfully re-docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on July 28. With a trouble free re-docking at 9:01 p.m. EDT, Russia’s federal space agency, Roscosmos, and contractor RSC Energia will aim for operational use of the KURS-NA on Soyuz crew transport as well as Progress cargo missions as soon as 2014.
The U.S. House of Representatives has mostly protected the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) environmental satellite programs in its fiscal 2013 markup this year. The House spending bill for NOAA, passed in May, made significant cuts to three programs, including Jason-3, which will provide precise measurements of ocean surface heights. Jason-3 is one of four programs that Senate appropriators, impatient with delays and overruns, took away from NOAA and gave to NASA. (See chart below.)
An article in the July 16 issue incorrectly identified the sponsor of the first U.S. space-station utilization conference (p. 50). The conference was sponsored by the American Astronautical Society.
On July 23, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) celebrated the 40th birthday of Landsat, the Earth-observing satellite series most closely identified with building a continuing data stream about how population growth, climate change, natural events and man's activities are influencing the planet.
Aerojet and Rocketdyne trace their roots to the dawn of the space age, with both companies building the engines that powered multiple generations of ICBMs and manned space vehicles. But the long-term outlook for both suppliers became clouded in recent years with the sharp decline in the demand for government launch services and the advent of new, lower-cost rivals, such as Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).
Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington), Michael Mecham (San Francisco)
For Sally Ride, who died July 23, 2012, of pancreatic cancer, being the first U.S. woman in space was only the beginning of a long and productive career.
WASHINGTON - Small satellites, once the realm of one-off low-budget science missions and undergraduate engineering classes, have come full circle with the growing realization among hard-pressed, high-end users that the little birds can do the big jobs, too. (Cubesat image: Raytheon)
After dueling foreign policy speeches before the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, the U.S. presidential candidates unleashed their surrogates on Washington, where a discussion at the Brookings Institution underscored both candidates' inability to answer questions on defense spending.
After years of little presidential attention during the last administration, aerospace and defense industry executives are now more in the loop with top Pentagon officials—but they don't feel any better. In the latest in a series of get-togethers, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and several CEOs and trade organization leaders sat down last week to discuss the so-called sequestration budget cuts that are set to take effect in January. But from reports of the meeting, neither side walked away with answers or reasons to feel less anxious.
Politics—not policy or technology—is proving to be the biggest obstacle to developing alternative-fuel programs for the military that could prove to be successful commercial energy alternatives, says Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate. The Pentagon is employing and deploying ships and aircraft using sound technology for alternative energy, particularly biofuels, Cuttino says.
NASA is pressing to use everything from robots to Russians in an effort to stretch the crew time available on the U.S. side of the International Space Station for research. William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations, says he is “narrowing down” the list of candidates he will select as early as this week for the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability effort, which will provide substantial seed money for at least three private efforts to deliver crews to the ISS as early as 2015.
Robert J. Stevens, Lockheed Martin's CEO, went to Capitol Hill on July 18 to deliver a warning: If Congress does nothing to halt another $500 billion in automatic cuts to U.S. defense spending due to begin next January under a process known as “sequestration,” the Pentagon's largest contractor will be forced to hand out 10,000 pink slips, riffing 8% of its workforce.
