XIAN, China — Japan’s space program will employ a new idle-thrust engine mode as a standard method of safely deorbiting second stages in missions of the H-IIB launcher, following a successful first mission last year.
XIAN, China — China’s new medium-heavy space launcher, the Long March 7, should fly late next year, entering service in an initial version capable of lifting 13.5 metric tons (30,000 lb.) to low orbit, making it significantly larger than current Chinese rockets. The Long March 7 will have four boosters, says the principal engineer of manufacturer CALT, Shen Lin, adding that China is also planning new upper stages and launch vehicles, some using solid propellants and others fueled with methane.
NASA is missing opportunities to transfer key technologies from its substantial research and development investments to the commercial sector, academia and other government agencies, according to an inspector general’s audit of the agency’s Space Technology Program.
HOUSTON — Texas A&M University is leading a collaboration on a novel “soft-push” technique for diverting hazardous Near Earth Asteroids that is gathering maturity for a future orbital flight test. NASA’s Ames Research Center and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia are collaborating with Texas A&M Aerospace Engineering Professor David Hyland, as he and his students seek a flight test opportunity as a secondary payload.
ATHENA PAD: Lockheed Martin has picked Alaska’s Kodiak Launch Complex as its dedicated West Coast site for Athena rocket launches. The company has been working with the state of Alaska and Alaska Aerospace Corporation on expansion plans for the new medium–lift launch pad to support potential Athena III launches. The company says it is “positioned to expand the Athena II program as it continues to evaluate the business case for Athena III launches from Alaska.” Lockheed Martin and partner ATK announced the resurrection of the Athena line in 2010.
Controllers are checking out the U.S. Navy's first Mobile User Objective System (MUOS-1) military communications spacecraft after its launch on an Atlas V, but it will be at least next year before troops can use its high-capacity new Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) payload for communications in motion.
In the 1990s the Pentagon was spending a lot of missile defense money on technology that could link its missile-launch warning sensors to “cue” the missile-intercept weapons it was developing. At the same time, astronomers worldwide were using the Internet and an instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory to cue their ground-based telescopes to gamma ray bursts virtually anywhere in the universe.
NASA will try to use its advanced technology programs to mollify planetary scientists outraged over the shutdown of the agency's ambitious plans to explore Mars in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). That may help restore some calm, as long as the capabilities developed as part of NASA's new open-ended technology push advance scientists' stated need to examine Mars samples in laboratories on Earth. So far, it is not clear that the work that is just getting started will be able to do that.
While the 500 customers Virgin Galactic has signed up—at $200,000 each—for a few minutes of microgravity on SpaceShipTwo (SS2) attract the headlines, the company is also seeking a different kind of passenger for its suborbital flights: scientists who are just as eager to buy research space in a box, or even a test tube.
BALLOONING: Near Space Corp. (NSC) is to begin construction this spring on a $6.9 million, 31,000-sq.-ft. commercial high-altitude balloon launch facility at its home base of Tillamook, Ore. NSC is one of seven suborbital flight providers in NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program and the only one not using rockets. The company expects to launch 10 research missions this year to altitudes exceeding 130,000 ft. Depending on their size, NSC’s balloons can support payloads up to 1 ton. NSC’s Eric Byers says the balloons typically have a loiter time of 3 hr.
Planning for the European Space Agency’s 2019 Lunar Lander mission incorporates three-dimensional imaging lidar technology to steer the spacecraft’s descent through the hazards of the ridge and boulder-filled landscape at the Moon’s south pole. Jena-Optronik, of Germany, and NEPTEC, of Canada, are leading parallel development efforts in low-power, minimal-volume lidar hardware for the hazard detection and avoidance function.
Houston – NASA’s emerging plans to consolidate “arc jet” testing of spacecraft thermal protection systems at Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, Calif., by closing a 46-year-old facility at Johnson Space Center in Houston are drawing protests from Texas lawmakers, who believe a dual capability is essential to the nation’s efforts to develop future commercial as well as government piloted and robotic spacecraft.
EXTENSION: NASA has awarded a contract extension and a pair of options worth a potential $46.6 million to Computer Sciences Corp. of Fort Worth for flight line service, maintenance and modifications of agency aircraft based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Effective March 1, the accord extends a $162.1 million base contract between NASA and Computer Sciences that became effective Sept. 1, 2009.
Palo Alto, Calif. – Virgin Galactic will be able to offer the potential of a “seamless” transition for scientists doing long-term microgravity experiments on the International Space Station and short-term suborbital flights aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo under an agreement with NanoRacks.
Singapore – Anatoly Perminov, the former director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has downplayed the prospect that Russia will have manned space missions to the Moon. In recent weeks, Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin disclosed that Russian astronauts may land on the Moon in 2020. Perminov, who stepped down last year as director general of Roscosmos and is now deputy director general of the agency’s joint-stock company, Russian Space Systems, was dismissive when asked about the reports.
The spacecraft-conjunction advisories put out by the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) are inaccurate and less useful to prevent interference and collisions than the orbit data that satellite operators have started sharing among themselves, according to a top Intelsat executive who has helped set up the operator collaboration.
What will it take to get commercial human spaceflight off the ground? When will it be available and attractive to “the 99%” the Wall Street Occupiers say they represent as well as for the superrich “1%”? A group of academics and “New Space” entrepreneurs say the answers are complicated, but that it won't hurt to have a space traveler with the common touch and a way with words.
PARIS – Following a rough year in 2010, France remained the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter last year, behind the U.S., U.K. and Russia, reporting a 25% boost – from €5.1 billion to €6.5 billion – at the end of 2011. The French armaments agency DGA estimates the world’s top four arms exporters account for 90% of the global military export market, although anemic U.S. and European budgets are helping to stimulate the market entry of new players, including China and South Korea.
LOW AWARDS: NASA has picked Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc. and Sierra Lobo Inc. as the 2011 winners of the George M. Low Awards for contractor quality and performance. Teledyne Brown, of Huntsville, Ala., provides support services in science, operations and maintenance, space systems engineering and other areas to Marshall Space Flight Center, and payload and cargo integration to Johnson Space Center.
Chris Scolese will take over as director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on March 5, replacing Robert Strain, recently named chief operating officer at Ball Aerospace. Scolese’s NASA-headquarters position as associate administrator will be filled on an acting basis by Robert Lightfoot, currently the director of Marshall Space Flight Center. Gene Goldman, Lightfoot’s deputy, will become acting director of the Alabama center.
