BRUSSELS and PARIS — The European Council is planning a drastic funding reduction to its showcase Earth observation program, according to a draft of the EU’s nearly €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) budget proposal for 2014-20, cutting more than €2 billion from the €5.8 billion planned for operations and sustainment of the Copernicus program, including money earmarked for development of follow-on spacecraft. The draft, obtained following two days of meetings in Brussels Feb. 7-8, indicates Copernicus will receive just €3.786 billion for the seven-year period.
The Republican chairmen of the two House committees with NASA oversight responsibility have charged publicly that senior leadership at the space agency may have been involved in the leak of classified information to China and other nations, and that a federal criminal probe into the charges has been dropped under “political pressure.”
There seems to be little hope of better defining U.S. space policy, given the current underfunded NASA vision of human expeditions to Mars and its ambitions to turn responsibility for low-Earth-orbit transportation over to commercial providers, according to members of an expert panel hosted by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Analysis of the Jan. 31 failure of a Sea Launch Zenit-3S with a big Boeing-built Intelsat communications satellite on board will center on thrust vector control in the Russian-built RD-171 main-stage engine, adding to the woes of Russia's mishap-plagued launch vehicle industry. Efforts by Sea Launch to regain financial momentum after emerging from bankruptcy also will be more difficult. The company has no additional firm missions on its manifest.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has developed the nation’s first undergraduate degree program in commercial space operations, which it plans to introduce at the school’s Daytona Beach, Fla., campus next fall.
The new partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) on the Orion deep-space crew capsule opens the door for more international cooperation in human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, U.S. space officials say. Just as the “critical path” to completion of the International Space Station was shared by U.S. and Russian launch vehicles, future exploration missions based on the four-seat Orion capsule will require European hardware in the capsule’s service module.
MONITORING AGENDA: The worldwide monitoring system set up to verify compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is a potential untapped treasure trove for science, according to the American Association for the Advancement Of Science (AAAS). “Science is only beginning to discover the value of this $1 billion system for uses beyond the detection of nuclear tests,” AAAS says in announcing a Feb. 17 panel on the subject.
The loss of a big Boeing-built Intelsat communications satellite in the first failure of a Sea Launch Zenit rocket since the multinational company emerged from bankruptcy protection is likely to make it more difficult for the equatorial launch provider to regain momentum. The company has no firm missions on its manifest beyond the one that failed Jan. 31, and relies on Russian hardware at a time when the reliability of that country’s launchers has been questioned through quality-control issues.
BEIJING — South Korea’s first satellite is communicating with the ground, demonstrating initial functionality following a launch on a KSLV-1 rocket on Jan. 30. To follow the KSLV-1, which matches a South Korean second stage to a first stage based on Russian technology, South Korea aims at developing its own rocket engine of 10 metric tons (22,000 lb.) thrust by 2016 and a 75-ton-thrust engine by 2018, officials tell local media.
The U.S. government spends more on weapons development than any other nation on the planet, but its plans for doing so are caught up in a larger financial debate.
The first of three advanced Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) spacecraft, procured for $354 million each, is heading for checkout in a temporary geostationary slot after this Jan. 30 nighttime launch on an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 41.
Iranian space officials say their nation's launch and recovery of a live monkey on a suborbital spaceflight advances the goal of an orbital human mission, but that day apparently is more distant than the stated 2020 date. The Iranian Space Agency is said to have used a variant of the Kavoshgar rocket for the 120-km (74-mi.) flight, following a 2011 test that reportedly carried a sealed biocapsule, but no monkey. The 22-meter-long (72-ft.) rocket is believed to have a payload capacity of 50 kg (110 lb.). Israel dismissed the flight as a “publicity stunt,” while a U.S.
A technology that turns computer-aided design (CAD) drawings into tangible hardware has advanced far beyond producing toy rockets and airplanes from plastic as a Science Technology Engineering and Mathmatics hook for schoolchildren. Today advanced versions of what once was called 3-D printing, and now is more commonly termed additive manufacturing (AM), is well on its way to producing large flightworthy components for real rockets and aircraft.
HOUSTON — The first in a new generation of NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellites has begun a measured climb to geosynchronous orbit, following a successful launch aboard a United Space Alliance Atlas V rocket late Jan. 30 from Cape Canaveral. The Boeing-built TDRS-K spacecraft marks the first addition in a decade to the aging, seven-spacecraft communications constellation that supports the Ka-, Ku- and S-band requirements of the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and a growing fleet of multi-agency Earth observations satellites.
IN ORBIT: South Korea’s STSAT 2C satellite is operating nominally following the Asian nation’s first successful launch from its Naro Space Center Jan. 30, according to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Succeeding on the third try with its two-stage KSLV-1 launcher, South Korea became the 11th nation to orbit its own spacecraft. Weighing less than 100 kg (220 lb.), the satellite will test space hardware and measure radiation levels from its elliptical polar orbit. Lofted from the facility southeast of Seoul, it follows North Korea’s Dec.
