Reauthorization of the Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA)—and its federal indemnification coverage and potential mandates over seeking informed-consent waivers from launch participants and crew—could be hot topics as U.S. lawmakers and industry prepare to update the nearly decade-old law. The Republican chairman of the House space subcommittee, Rep. Steven Palazzo (Miss.), says he is eager to work for reauthorization and he knows that industry has a long list of desired changes, including the Federal Communications Commission's regulatory reach into space.
A “discussion draft” of a two-year NASA reauthorization bill drew fire in its originating congressional committee June 19, with Democrats complaining about cuts in Earth Science funding, one Republican leader promising to vote again the bill unless funds are added to a project under way in his district, and two witnesses warning that NASA may have to choose between the International Space Station and human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
HOUSTON - With eight new candidates, NASA intends to sustain the number of U.S. astronauts at 45 to 55 men and women for the foreseeable future, well down from an all-time high of 139 fliers in 2000, when the agency was launching five to six shuttle missions annually and beginning to continuously staff the International Space Station.
LE BOURGET — The European Space Agency (ESA) and its industrial partners need to reduce the weight of a service module they are developing to fly on NASA’s Orion multipurpose crew exploration vehicle in 2017, a hurdle that will delay preliminary design review of the project by a little more than three months.
SINGAPORE — Australian satellite operator NewSat acknowledges that one of the pitfalls in securing business from Australia’s defense department and other national militaries is that if NewSat were to ever be sold to a foreign party, Australia’s military may take issue.
NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program has been overly aggressive in payments to Orbital Sciences Corp., the agency’s second commercial cargo provider for the International Space Station, according to an audit by the agency’s Inspector General Paul Martin. Orbital, unlike rival COTS provider SpaceX, has yet to carry out its first demonstration mission to the station. Martin characterized $150 million in transfers to the company as premature. Discussions were underway to advance another $70 million, he said.
LAUNCH FAILURE: When it comes to the space launch marketplace, Americans are too busy fighting themselves while losing ground to Russia and other countries in the global sector, says a key author of the Obama administration’s 2010 National Space Policy.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have kicked off a four-year study of vision problems that surfaced among crewmembers several years ago and now rank among the top health concerns facing those selected for future deep-space missions. Nineteen ISS astronauts have developed symptoms of impaired vision since the ailment was first recognized in 2005, according to Dr. Christian Otto, principal investigator for the NASA-sponsored Prospective Observational Study of Ocular Health.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) has authorized a $343.3 million direct loan to Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co. Ltd. (AsiaSat) to finance the purchase of two Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) communications satellites, plus launch services. SS/L is building AsiaSat 6, a C-band satellite, and AsiaSat 8, a mixed Ku/Ka-band satellite, under a contract announced in November 2011. The launches, to be carried out by SpaceX, are planned for the first half of 2014. To date in fiscal 2013, the Ex-Im Bank has authorized $891 million in support of U.S.
An Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL air-launched rocket is in final preparation to send a NASA scientific satellite into polar orbit to study a poorly understood region of the Sun's atmosphere in unprecedented detail. The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) (see image) will combine an ultraviolet telescope and a multi-channel imaging spectrograph to study the interface region between the visible surface of the Sun and its upper atmosphere, which is the source of most of the Sun's UV radiation.
NASA's long-lived Opportunity rover is rolling toward a new destination at Endeavour Crater on Mars, following one of the nine-year mission's most striking discoveries, a rock rich in clay minerals that points to an early, biologically friendly era dominated by water with a neutral chemistry. Opportunity's internal examination of the rock Esperance in a region known as Cape York on the crater's rim has produced findings strikingly similar to those from rock analysis by NASA's Curiosity rover at the Yellowknife Bay region of distant Gale Crater.
Test pilots working for Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic expect to expand the SpaceShipTwo flight envelope rapidly this year, and to reach the edge of space before the end of December.
Despite the fact that the deal creates a monopoly for certain advanced propulsion systems, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said June 11 that it will not challenge GenCorp’s acquisition of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne for about $550 million. Approval was given “primarily because the Department of Defense wishes to see the transaction go forward for national security reasons,” the FTC said.
BEIJING — Now classifying its Shenzhou spacecraft as operational equipment, not experimental, China launched its fifth manned space mission on June 11. The objectives of the 15-day Shenzhou 10 mission are to further develop China’s technologies for docking and supporting human life in space, laying the groundwork for the space station that is supposed to be operational around 2020. With Shenzhou 10, the phase aimed at perfecting docking and spacewalking techniques should be complete.
