Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Virgin Galactic are working under U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) contracts to design air-launch systems that can orbit sub-100-lb. payloads for $1 million, including range costs. “Previous attempts at air launch did not focus enough on the rocket side,” says Mitchell Burnside Clapp, Darpa’s Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (Alasa) program manager. “They over-invested in an aircraft that could only do one thing—support the launch.”
NASA plans to launch an exterior Earth-observation platform to the International Space Station under a cooperative agreement with Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc., which builds the flight releasable attachment mechanism (FRAM) manufactured by the Huntsville, Ala.-based subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies Inc.
Spacecraft engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hope to land the Mars Curiosity rover closer to its target than originally planned, moving the “sky crane” touchdown about 4 mi. nearer the base of the mountain where scientists seek to explore layers of sedimentary rock for evidence that a wetter Mars could have supported life.
PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) will negotiate a late 2013 launch window for the first Sentinel Earth observation satellite and continue funding the joint Euro-Russian ExoMars program through the end of this year, according to ESA officials. During a June 13-14 meeting of the ESA ruling council here, the 19-member agency was told it could secure a three-month launch window for the Sentinel 1A satellite beginning in October 2013, despite uncertainty over funding for the spacecraft’s operations.
Technicians at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center soon will begin integrating the first instrument received there for the James Webb Space Telescope. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), assembled by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K., will cover wavelengths of 5-28 microns from the Webb’s planned perch at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point.
NUSTAR FLIES: NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is in orbit and sending back signals following its June 13 air-launch over the central Pacific Ocean aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket dropped from the belly of an L-1011 Stargazer aircraft that took off from Kwajalein Atoll. Ignition took place at approximately 12 p.m. EDT. NuSTAR separated 13 min. later, and the first signals from the spacecraft were received by NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System at 12:14 p.m.
HOUSTON — The enthusiasm for a Mars sample return mission remains high in Europe as well as in the U.S., but it can only be realized if the brightest minds in the global planetary science community can marshal the resources to overcome the technical and political obstacles, according to space agency officials who gathered here June 12 for a NASA-sponsored workshop.
Has rescheduled liftoff of the MSG-3 meteorological spacecraft to July 5 from June 19 to give satellite fleet operator Hughes Network Systems time to conduct additional checks of its EchoStar 17.
HOUSTON — A growing collaborative effort between NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the Houston Technology Center (HTC) to establish high-tech startups by leveraging the skills of laid-off shuttle and Constellation program workers as well as other active professionals is beginning to take advantage of synergies with the region’s other economic strong suits: energy, medicine, information technology and emergent nanotechnology.
NUSTAR: NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuStar) high-energy X-ray observatory is on track for an 11:30 a.m. EDT launch June 13 by an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket dropped from a converted L-1011 commercial jet south of the Kwajalein atoll. During a teleconference from Kwajalein, NASA Launch Director Omar Baez said the drop, at 3:30 a.m. local time, will take place in a 120-mi. square “box” south of Kwajalein from an altitude of 41,000 ft.
HOUSTON — NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is canceling the over-budget Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS) astrophysics mission, following the denial this week of an appeal from the Goddard Space Flight Center-led science team, the agency announced June 7. Congress is being formally notified that the 2009 mission selection, capped at $119 million, not counting launch costs, is being canceled, says Paul Hertz, NASA’s astrophysics division director.
HOUSTON — A multinational crew of four is scheduled to evaluate a range of asteroid exploration strategies following a June 11 descent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aquarius Reef Base undersea habitat off Key Largo, Fla., for a 12-day stay.
HOUSTON — The success of the SpaceX/Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station has not been lost on Ad Astra Rocket Co., a seven-year-old venture focused on the development of advanced electric plasma propulsion systems for commercial in-space transportation. “That is the proof in the pudding,” says Jared Squire, Ad Astra’s senior vice president for research, of the nine-day SpaceX pathfinder mission nurtured by NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. “That type of relationship works.”
NASA will get a little slack from Congress on how it may procure commercial crew transportation for astronauts headed to the International Space Station (ISS), but apparently no more money.
Iran's new space centre, which will be used to launch both its own and other Islamic nations' satellites, is now 80% complete according to news reports.
Sierra Nevada Corp. will attempt the first free flight of its Dream Chaser commercial-crew spacecraft this summer, including an autonomous approach and landing at Edwards AFB, Calif., following this captive-carry test of the flight vehicle. An Erickson Air-Crane heavy-lift helicopter carried the composite 25,000-lb. vehicle through an hour-long test May 30 designed to assess its aerodynamic performance.
