As Europe and China prepare to talk potential International Space Station (ISS) cooperation in Paris this month, NASA’s top official is tempering expectations, absent approval from Congress and all five nations supporting the orbiting outpost.
The future research productivity of the International Space Station (ISS) rests on the delayed startup of U.S. commercial resupply missions within the next year, experts from NASA and the agency’s oversight panels told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee March 28.
Nearing the midpoint of its 254-day journey, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has successfully carried out the second of six planned trajectory correction maneuvers, fine-tuning the rover’s course toward an Aug. 6 landing on the red planet within the scientifically promising Gale Crater. All 10 of MSL’s science instruments have been successfully activated and checked out as well.
SANTIAGO, Chile — Embraer is hoping to secure two key Brazilian government contracts this year as it looks to expand its defense and security activities. One is the Sisfron domestic security program, estimated at $4 billion, for which Embraer wants to serve as prime contractor and integrator for diverse elements such as radars, unmanned aircraft, communications and other systems, says Luiz Carlos Aguiar, CEO of Embraer Defense and Security, at the Fidae air show here.
RECOGNIZED: Aviation Week Senior Editor for Space Frank Morring Jr. will receive the National Space Club’s Press Award on March 30 in Washington. The club, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting U.S. space activity and interests, will bestow the 2011 award to Morring at its annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner.
Lockheed Martin officials acknowledge that they have learned some things from the company’s loss to rival Boeing of a $3.5 billion contract to continue managing the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) anti-ballistic missile system — and they are likely to apply this knowledge to some forthcoming work as the company continues to try to expand its footprint in that market.
ASTRONAUT HEALTH: NASA has granted a five-year, $120 million extension of its long-running cooperative agreement with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) for studies of the health risks associated with long-duration human spaceflight. The pact includes investigations of proposed countermeasures and their wider application to traditional medicine. Announced March 23, the extension brings to $484.2 million the potential value of the initial collaboration forged in March 1997. The latest of four extensions takes effect Oct. 1.
Controllers are checking out Intelsat 22 after its successful launch on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 25. Liftoff was at 8:10 a.m. EDT (6:10 p.m. local time). After a 15-hr., 30-min. mission, the rocket’s Breeze M upper stage released the satellite into a supersynchronous transfer orbit (SSTO) with a 65,000-km (40,400-mi.) apogee. Once operational in May, the spacecraft will replace Intelsat 709 at 72 deg. East and is expected to have an 18-year service life.
Controllers deorbited a stranded Russian-owned communications satellite March 25, after Russian officials rejected a request to keep it operating from a startup company created to salvage the Astrium-built spacecraft for service to scientists in Antarctica.
KOUROU, French Guiana — European Space Agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain met with his Chinese counterpart March 22-23 to discuss future cooperation in manned spaceflight, including the potential for a Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS). The two sides met at Dordain’s request on the sidelines of the European Space Agency’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) launch to the ISS March 23 to further establish a dialogue and lay the groundwork for potential Sino-European cooperation in manned spaceflight.
The European Space Agency’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) resupply spacecraft is speeding toward a docking with the International Space Station (ISS), following a smooth countdown and liftoff from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, early March 23.
NEW DELHI — India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is getting a boost, with the government allocating 1.25 billion rupees ($25 million) to the effort for the 2012-13 fiscal year. “The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch a Mars orbiter as early as November 2013 with a scientific payload weighing nearly 25 kg [55 lb.],” according to the budget document, which was introduced in parliament March 16.
NASA WORK: NASA has selected four Texas companies to perform a range of engineering and architectural services for Johnson Space Center in Houston under five-year contracts worth a combined $49 million. They include PDG Architects; Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc; and URS Group Inc., all of Houston; and HDR Architecture of Dallas. The agreements, announced March 22, cover feasibility studies; conceptual design work; engineering reports; budget estimates; and designs for alterations, new construction, repairs and refurbishment.
Boeing has finalised a firm-fixed-price contract with Al Yah Satellite Company (Yahsat), the UAE-based satellite operator, to design and build active electronically-steered phased-array antenna systems for aircraft.
INTELSAT 22: The Intelsat 22 communications satellite is slated to launch on an International Launch Services Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on March 25 at 8:10 a.m. EDT (6:10 p.m. local time). Based on Boeing’s 702MP satellite bus, the 6,200-kg (13,700-lb.) spacecraft will carry two Ku-band mobility beams providing coverage of the Indian Ocean region. From its position at 72 deg. East, it will serve the Middle East and eastern Africa with its Ku-band capacity.
HOUSTON — Researchers could be at work soon on new techniques for the detection and treatment of vision problems found in astronauts assigned to long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A report earlier this month in the journal Radiology, based on magnetic resonance imaging studies on 27 long-duration astronauts, found some with symptoms similar to idiopathic intercranial hypertension, including swelling of the optic nerve and an outward pressure on the eyeballs (Aerospace DAILY, March 15).
HOUSTON — NASA and its longtime partner, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), are positioning themselves to fund and restart the production of plutonium-238 within “six to seven years” as a power source for a range of possible missions to the outer Solar System, including those assigned to support the search for extraterrestrial life.
FORT EUSTIS, Va. — As it prepares to launch a technology demonstration for the next generation of rotorcraft, the U.S. Army’s aviation research arm has a series of smaller programs getting under way that will feed technology into the Joint Multi Role (JMR) effort. From avionics to engines, and airframes to weapons, the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) at Fort Eustis, Va., has had an array of science and technology (S&T) programs ongoing since 2004 to lay the foundations for the Army’s next rotorcraft.
Two members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that sets NASA funding — a Democrat and a Republican — blasted the agency’s proposal to take a deep cut in its planetary-science accounts, and to drop out of its joint robotic Mars exploration effort with the European Space Agency (ESA).
NASA has selected 24 suborbital space technology payloads to fly this year and next on a mix of reusable commercial launch vehicles, high-altitude balloons and aircraft flying parabolas to briefly simulate weightlessness. Under the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program, 16 of the payloads will fly on the Zero-G parabolic aircraft; two will go on balloons from Near Space Corp. that fly above 65,000 ft.; five will fly on suborbital, reusable launch vehicles; and one will fly both on a balloon and a suborbital launch vehicle.
A revision of the 2004 U.S. space transportation policy is likely to include “directive language” designed to boost the commercial space industry, according to a former official who helped draft the broad policy that the revision will illuminate.
HOUSTON — NASA’s planetary science program, faced with a steep cut in President Barack Obama’s proposed 2013 budget, is counting on a successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and closer ties to the better-funded human space exploration initiative to support a timely rebound, top agency science officials said during the opening session of the 43rd annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) here.
HOUSTON — Thanks to a final shuttle mission in July 2011, the International Space Station is well provisioned to sustain a six-person crew and a full research agenda well into 2013, NASA Program Manager Mike Suffredini said March 20. The outlook as Atlantis touched down after the 13-day STS-135 mission on July 21 was that the station had enough supplies for a year.
A dozen NASA software patents are scheduled to go on the auction block next week, covering potential applications in software development, telecommunications, smart grids, robotics, wireless sensor networks and cybersecurity. Goddard Space Flight Center’s Innovative Partnerships Program Office will offer the software at auction in three lots at the 15th ICAP Ocean Tomo IP Auction in Palos Verdes, Calif. Successful bidders will receive exclusive licensing rights and time with the technologies’ NASA inventors.
Members of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) voted overregulation as their number one long-term concern in the association’s annual member’s survey, but uneasiness about skilled worker shortages was close behind at the number two spot, said Christian Klein, EVP, ARSA, at the association’s symposium last week in Arlington, Va. The workforce issue came in as the second most important long-term threat to the aviation maintenance industry, tied with high fuel prices and grievances with the FAA.
