LOS ANGELES — NASA is completing fabrication of the first Lockheed Martin Orion crew exploration capsule due to be tested in space, while at the same time starting key vacuum tests on the Alliant Techsystems (ATK)-built composite module that could form the basis for future crew transport to Earth orbit. Following final structural work, the Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) Orion will be shipped from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., where it will undergo final assembly and checkout.
DARK MATTERS: European scientists finally have agreed to start the $1 billion Euclid project, devoted to the study of dark energy. After months of delay in securing approval, Euclid still proved too compelling to set aside, despite far exceeding the funding allocated for what the European Space Agency calls its medium-class missions. The 2,160-kg (4,750-lb.) satellite is scheduled to launch to the L2 Lagrangian point in the second quarter of 2020 aboard a European variant of the Soyuz rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
ICY MOON: Mapping the floor of the Moon’s Shackleton Crater in what NASA describes as unprecedented detail, agency scientists and university researchers have calculated that unusually bright laser returns from the crater floor may be caused by ice mixed in with other material there. As much as 22% of the surface material in Shackleton could be ice, according to a paper published in the journal Nature, based on laser-mapping data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnnaisance Orbiter.
HOUSTON — U.S. and Canadian Space Agency ground-control teams successfully advanced techniques outside the International Space Station (ISS) this week for extending the lives of aging satellites by refueling them, repairing damage or moving inactive spacecraft to prevent them from becoming collision hazards.
While NASA astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are fully booked with scientific and engineering research for now, most of that work has involved projects the U.S. space agency is funding
China continues to find itself shut out of the International Space Station, blocked by U.S. congressional anger over the way the nation treats its dissidents and regional separatists. But China takes the long view and its leaders appear willing to do whatever it takes to establish a Chinese presence in space eventually. Last week the crew of Shenzhou 9—mission commander Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang, the first Chinese woman in space, and Liu Yang—entered the Tiangong-1 spacecraft launched earlier (see photo).
The U.S. Air Force Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program is 50-for-50 with the liftoff June 20 of a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on an Atlas V, notching a perfect record in 50 launches since August 2002. Here the Atlas V, a 401 configuration with a 4-meter payload fairing, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, with the NROL-38 payload. Liftoff was at 8:28 a.m. EDT, and the NRO termed the mission a success.
Every day, hundreds of aircraft traverse the world's busiest oceanic airspace over the North Atlantic, spending most of their journey out of range of existing surveillance technology. A planned global satellite-based service could change that, bringing the advantages of air traffic control to this vital corridor as well as to other areas lacking surveillance coverage.
The U.S. Air Force is gearing up to set another round of firsts with the pending third launch of the Boeing X-37B, but what those milestones may be will remain as much of a mystery as it has been with the recently completed second flight. Looking relatively pristine after its fiery reentry through the atmosphere, the second X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-2) completed a record-breaking 15-month classified mission with a textbook autonomous landing at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on June 16.
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. government decided to merge its military and civilian polar-orbiting weather satellite programs, because they shared a number of similarities. The combination of future weather-satellite systems into a single program, designated the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (Npoess), was justified as a cost-saving measure. Consequently, military-civilian weather satellite ground control stations were integrated into NOAA facilities at Suitland, Md.
The independent organization that NASA selected to run National Laboratory work on the International Space Station may be off to a slow start, but outside “pathfinders” on the ISS are demonstrating ways to use its unique environment that already fall outside traditional government methods.
Astronaut Don Pettit is a real Mr. Fixit, and that is just fine with the scientists who trust him to run their experiments on the International Space Station.
As NASA mission planners wait with bated breath for the Mars Science Laboratory to scream into the Martian atmosphere at hypersonic speed on Aug. 5, deploy its braking parachute, fire its retro-rockets and lower the Curiosity rover by tether to a soft landing, thoughts are again turning to exploring the red planet from the air.
TECH TRANSFER: NASA has launched a new “technology transfer portal” where entrepreneurs, managers and others can look for new, publicly funded technology to commercialize. The site, at http://technology.nasa.gov, includes a searchable database of NASA patents available for transfer to the private domain, and links to agency specialists trained to help make the shift. “A priority of NASA is to get federally funded new technologies into the commercial marketplace,” said Mason Peck, the agency’s chief technologist.
XCOR Aerospace will use its planned two-seat suborbital Lynx spaceplane to train crewmembers for missions that the Excalibur Almaz startup hopes to fly to low Earth orbit and beyond with surplus Russian hardware. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding during the third Royal Aeronautical Society European Space Tourism Conference in London June 20.
NRO LAUNCH: United Launch Alliance and the U.S. Air Force launched the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) classified NROL-38 satellite from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral at 8:28 a.m. EDT June 20 aboard an Atlas V rocket. The mission marks the second of four NRO launches scheduled to take place over a space of five months this year. The next is slated for June 28. Launch had been delayed from an earlier target of June 18 to allow for a valve replacement that required the rocket to be rolled back from the pad.
SINGAPORE — Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall dismisses talk of consolidation among satellite makers. “In Europe there used to only be two main manufacturers of satellites,” Le Gall told Aviation Week June 19. “A few years ago people were wondering ‘When will they merge?’ The thinking was that it was better to have one rather than two, but then we ended up with three in Europe.”
