NEW DELHI — A comet moving toward Mars will not derail India’s first orbiter mission to the red planet, the country’s top scientist says. Preparations are in full swing for the country’s first orbiter mission to Mars, “Maangalyaan,” which is scheduled to be launched Nov. 27. NASA earlier this year announced that a comet is due to pass by Mars in September 2014, roughly the same time India’s Mars orbiter reaches the planet about 400 km (249 mi.) away, raising fears the comet might disturb its mission plans.
SATELLITE CONTROL: Congressional auditors see the U.S. military’s almost $14 billion worth of satellite control networks as ripe for consolidation. In an April 18 report, the Government Accountability Office recommended the Office of the Secretary of Defense direct future defense satellite acquisition programs to create a business case for proceeding with either a dedicated or shared network for that program’s satellite control operations, as well as develop a department-wide, long-term plan for modernizing the Air Force Satellite Control Network.
Metamaterials technology is an emerging field based on the development of tiny, man-made structures that at certain frequencies exhibit acoustic, electromagnetic or optical properties not found in nature.
As he was recently discussing the pivot of U.S. strategic emphasis to the Asia-Pacific region, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter repeated an assertion that the U.S. spends more on defense “than the next 16 largest militaries combined.” While Carter's talking point is more or less technically correct, such a comparison does not indicate what an appropriate level of spending should be. A more useful way to think about U.S.
HOUSTON — NASA’s ambitious plans to identify and retrieve a small asteroid and park it near the Moon for a visit by U.S. astronauts as early as 2021 would require a twofold improvement in solar electric propulsion (SEP) technologies, according to NASA. Efforts to improve SEP were under way well ahead of the yet-to-be-priced asteroid mission featured in President Barack Obama’s proposed $17.7 billion space agency budget for 2014, NASA says.
NASA’s proposed mission to wrangle an asteroid into lunar orbit would marry the embattled space agency’s disparate programs while providing the foundation for humans to move beyond low Earth orbit, according to a key official’s remarks on Capitol Hill.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Inspiration Mars, the bold plan to send a man and woman on a 501-day trip around the Red Planet beginning in January 2018, reports individuals and industry are offering their services for the task, including “hundreds” of couples who have qualifications that would put them in the running.
NO CONFLICT: French Prime Minster Jean-Marc Ayrault says there is no conflict between a new Europeanized variant of Soyuz and France’s plan to introduce a lighter, more modular successor to its Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher, which will ultimately eliminate Europe’s need for the Russian medium-lift rocket.
After a decade of multibillion-dollar cost overruns and delays in delivering satellites, it seems the U.S. Air Force can claim that it has finally averted a potential disaster—at least for now—on its next big satellite program.
Boeing is developing a family of small satellites—from 4-1,000 kg (8.8-2,204 lb.) in size—to whet the growing appetites of commercial and government customers interested in lower-cost space platforms. This small satellite market, potentially worth billions in the next 10 years, is “coming of age,” says Alex Lopez, vice president of advanced network and space systems at Boeing. The company has yet to get a committed customer.
As Jean-Yves Le Gall takes the helm at French space agency CNES this month, he leaves behind a 12-year tenure as head of European launch consortium Arianespace, a legacy that began shortly before the 2002 failure of an Ariane 5 rocket left the launch vehicle's future in doubt. Since then, Ariane 5 has launched 54 consecutive times without failure from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, a track record unrivaled by U.S. rockets and one that has allowed Arianespace to capture more than half the world's commercial launch market today.
As U.S. defense priorities change, Lockheed Martin Space Systems is renewing a strategy that it has used for years: tapping into Silicon Valley's penchant for sharing ideas.
NASA's Chris Cassidy, newly arrived flight engineer on Expedition 35 to the International Space Station (ISS), is at the cutting edge of mankind's space endeavor as he uses the Minus Eighty-degree Freezer in Japan's Kibo lab module to store research samples. The work Cassidy and other station astronauts do in the coming decade is likely to shape how far, and how fast, humans will move into the Solar System.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Orbital Sciences Corp. believes it can sell space on the commercial cargo vehicle it has developed with NASA seed money as an orbiting laboratory once it is unloaded and unberthed from the International Space Station. The Orbital Sciences Antares medium-lift launch vehicle set for its inaugural flight next week won’t carry the Cygnus capsule developed to deliver cargo to the ISS, but the instrumented mass simulator it is set to place in orbit will remain there for several months before re-entering the atmosphere.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is working toward a full-scale turbomachinery test next year of the F-1B kerosene fueled rocket engine it is developing with Dynetics as a potential power plant for the advanced side-mounted boosters NASA will need to meet the 130-metric-ton congressional requirement for its planned Space Launch System.
