Russian Defense Ministry to Withdraw
From Use of Rokot Boosters in 2016 (Source: Itar-Tass)
In a bid to reduce the dependence on imports, Russia’s Defense Ministry
intends to withdraw the Rokot light space launch vehicles from use
starting from 2016, Commander of the Aerospace Defense Forces
Lieutenant General Alexander Golovko said.
“The launches of the Rokot carrier rockets today are carried out in the
interests of the Defense Ministry within the Federal Space Program and
international cooperation programs,” Golovko told Defense Minister
Sergei Shoigu. “Four launches are planned in the interests of the
Defense Ministry — three in 2015 and one — in 2016. In the future, the
Defense Ministry will be able to use the light carrier rockets Soyuz
2.1v and Angara for its tasks,” Golovko said. “Thus we will not depend
on imports for light-class rockets,” said Shoigu. (8/27)
Chinese Team is Catching Up in Hunt
for Dark Matter (Source: Science)
On Thursday, physicists in China reported the latest result in the
search for particles of dark matter, the mysterious stuff whose gravity
holds the galaxies together. Researchers with the Particle and
Astrophysical Xenon (PandaX) detector spotted no sign of their quarry,
which isn't surprising because PandaX isn't yet as sensitive as a
detector already running in the United States that hasn't seen anything
either. Still, the finding is notable because the PandaX detector
features a clever design that might enable it to vie for the
sensitivity lead in the next year or so.
The new work "is very credible," says Richard Gaitskell, a physicist at
Brown University and a member of the team working with the Large
Underground Xenon (LUX) detector at the Sanford Underground Research
Facility in Lead, South Dakota, the current leader in sensitivity.
Rafael Lang, a physicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette,
Indiana, and a member of the collaboration building an even more
sensitive detector known as XENON1T in Italy's subterranean Gran Sasso
National Laboratory, agrees. PandaX researchers "are doing a great job
in [catching up] and making extremely fast progress," he says. (8/26)
The Competition for Dollars
(Source: Planetary Society)
One of the most common misperceptions about NASA is the amount of money
the U.S. government spends on the agency. NASA competes for funding
with all of the various entities that make up the federal government,
but the agency is now confronting larger economic trends over which the
space community has little control.
It’s worth looking into this topic a bit to help understand just what
we have received for our investment in NASA over the past fifty years,
and why we should continue to invest in space science. In this series
of posts, I hope to do so in a way that clearly explains NASA’s
position in the federal government and the U.S. economy, and hopefully
shed some light on the nature of the budget challenges facing planetary
science today. Click here.
(8/27)
Regulating Asteroid Mining
(Source: Space Daily)
The idea of mining asteroids is definitely in vogue. In the past few
years commercial space advocates have been pursuing new private-sector
space business activities. Profiting from orbital operations is not a
new idea. Commercial space activities started in the early 1960s, with
the launch of the first geosynchronous communications satellites.
Many thought these early commercial space ventures were just the
beginning of a vast array of other commercially viable space
applications. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of potentially
profitable concepts have been tested in the financial markets, but few
have gotten beyond the drawing board.
Today, some 50 years after the first commercial space success, we can
point to only a few sustained and successful private sector space
operations. Surprisingly, geostationary communications satellite
services remain as the largest commercial benefactor of the natural
space environment. Click here.
(8/26)
NASA's Asteroid Plan May be Cheapest
Route to Mars (Source: USA Today)
NASA's asteroid redirect mission is meant to be a cheaper steppingstone
to Mars than landing on the moon, and already scientists have
identified three possible asteroids on which astronauts could land. The
asteroid plan, would cost between $1.25 billion and $2.6 billion, not
including the price of the rocket. Congress is split on support of the
mission, which NASA estimates is needed in order to get humans on Mars
by the 2030s. Click here.
(8/26)
NASA Cancels Plan for Ohio Drone
Competition (Source: Dayton Daily News)
NASA has scrubbed the launch of a long-anticipated UAS competition this
fall, a program manager at the space agency confirmed Tuesday. The
Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airspace Operations Challenge was set Sept.
10-17 at Camp Atterbury, Ind., about two hours southwest of Dayton. A
rescheduled date was not announced.
NASA and Development Projects Inc., an affiliate of the Dayton
Development Coalition, organized the two-year competition offering $1.5
million in prize money. Sam Ortega, manager of NASA Centennial
Challenges Program, said in an email the space agency and DPI “are
reviewing the operations and resources necessary to execute this
challenge successfully and fairly for all of the teams registered to
date.” (8/26)
California State Senate Approves Drone
Privacy Bill (Source: ASA California)
Legislation to protect the privacy rights of Californians passed out of
the California State Senate on a bipartisan vote. AB 1327,
authored by Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (R-Camarillo), Senator Ted Lieu (D-
Redondo Beach), Assemblyman Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), and
Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-Hayward) protects the privacy rights of
Californians by establishing basic restrictions on the government use
of unmanned aerial systems, also known as “drones” for surveillance.
(8/26)
NASA’s Space Launch System Moves from
Design into Construction (Source: Houston Chronicle)
Today NASA announced it has formally switched the Space Launch System
program from its “formulation” stage into “implementation,” a Rubicon
of sorts known as Key Decision Point-C. This is the large rocket that
NASA hopes one day will launch its astronauts to Mars. “We are on a
journey of scientific and human exploration that leads to Mars,” NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden said today. “And we’re firmly committed to
building the launch vehicle and other supporting systems that will take
us on that journey.”
Passing this “key decision point” is significant for NASA, and
represents a significant commitment to the rocket program. To date NASA
has spent only about 30 percent of the SLS’s estimated $9 billion
development cost. Bolden’s decision greenlights spending the rest. It’s
also worth noting in today’s announcement that the target date for the
rocket’s first test flight is now November, 2018, nearly a full year
later than the initial target of 2017. (8/27)
Aggressive SpaceX Puts Commercial
Space Rivals on Notice (Source: Fortune)
It’s easy to think Elon Musk’s spaceflight company is more hype than
reality, but look more closely at its competitors’ moves and you can
see evidence of disruption. Last week, rumors concerning the value of
Elon Musk’s SpaceX rippled across the Web after tech startup-watcher
TechCrunch reported that private investment in the company valued it at
“somewhere south of $10 billion.”
SpaceX quickly quashed the rumor. “SpaceX is not currently raising any
funding nor has any external valuation of that magnitude or higher been
done,” a company spokesman said in a statement. And so SpaceX ended the
week just as it began it, despite having briefly enjoyed the status of
a $10 billion industry behemoth. Perhaps the best way to evaluate
SpaceX and its potential value isn’t in dollar figures or in audacious
claims, but by observing what the upstart space firm is already doing
to its competition in the commercial space industry.
That competition—mostly European space launch providers like France’s
Arianespace and International Launch Services —has largely held a
monopoly on commercial space launches since the U.S. retreated from the
industry in the early 1980s. The $200 billion satellite industry makes
up a huge and growing chunk of SpaceX’s nearly 40-strong launch
manifest through 2018. If SpaceX’s competitors in Europe and elsewhere
believe all this to be nothing but hype, they have a strange way of
showing it. To even the casual observer, SpaceX’s competitors appear to
be scrambling. Click here.
(8/27)
Spaceport Indiana Offers Adult Space
Camp (Source: Spaceport Indiana)
Why should kids have all the fun? That's Not Fair! So we are making it
a little more fun for adults as we add a two day space camp just for
them! Take a break from the normal weekend and join us on October
11-12. Create your own experiments and payloads and get ready to launch
a platform to the edge of space on October 12th! Saturday night
includes a BBQ and refreshments and then some rest for a big day of
launching, tracking and recovery. This is designed for folks over 21
years of age. Click here.
(8/26)
Space Coast Congressional Candidate
Seeks NewSpace Development (Source: G. Rothblatt)
Gabriel Rothblatt, a Democrat, hopes to unseat Republican Bill Posey in
November to represent Florida's 8th district in the U.S. House of
Representatives. Among the issues Rothblatt hopes to champion is the
diversification of the Cape Canaveral Spaceport to include more
"NewSpace" businesses and programs. Click here to see a
new video describing his vision. (8/26)
Guardian of the Galaxy: The Woman
Planning for a Space Catastrophe (Source: CNN)
When a disaster of a mega-proportion hits a city - from a terror attack
to a hurricane - there are procedures in place to deal with the
aftermath. Suggest that the source of a serious humanitarian crisis
could lie in outer space, however, and many will assume you are talking
science fiction. But one woman is on a mission to convince the world --
and especially governments and the United Nations -- to take threats
such as potential asteroid strikes more seriously. Click here.
(8/26)
NASA Picks Up $120M Option on Jacobs'
Marshall Contract (Source: Space News)
NASA picked up a one-year, $120 million option on Tullahoma,
Tennessee-based Jacobs Technology’s Engineering and Science Services
and Skills Augmentation contract at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
The option begins Sept. 27 and continues through Oct. 2, 2015, NASA
said. Jacobs won the contract in 2012. Including the two-year base
period and three one-year options — one of which has now been exercised
— the total potential value of the deal is $600 million. (8/25)
DOD Officials Expand Space-Tracking
Website (Source: USAF)
Defense Department officials announced additions to its space
situational awareness program’s Space-Track.org website. Maj. Gen.
David D. Thompson, U.S. Strategic Command’s director of plans and
policy, said the release of new high-quality positional information on
space debris of an unknown origin will help owner-operators better
protect their satellites from objects and ultimately create less space
debris.
“We run a predictive program that shows where the objects are, where
they will be in the future, and the potential for these objects to run
into each other,” Thompson said. Thompson explained that most of the
debris that is considered “objects of unknown origin” resulted from
launches or space collisions, but has not been definitively identified
by source. (8/26)
Effective Space Solutions Offers Space
Towing Services (Source: Globes)
Effective Space Solutions, a new Israeli startup, is developing a
solution, which it calls De-Orbiter, for towing satellites sent to the
wrong place. Former head of Israel's space directorate and Israel
Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) space division general manager Arie
Halsband founded the company.
The company says that De-Orbiter could have helped the Galileo
satellite, which was recently launched in the wrong direction. The
company's technology is slated to become operational in 18 months. "We
could have saved the satellite," Halsband says. "That was exactly the
situation we're aiming at. Our micro-satellite was designed to provide
space services, such as changing a location or communications problems
between satellites." (8/26)
With Commercial Crew Award Close,
Rivals Mull Future without NASA Funds (Source: Space News)
The three companies bidding to succeed the retired space shuttle as
NASA’s means of sending astronauts to and from the international space
station have different fallback plans for their respective vehicles
should they get passed over for a final round of government development
funding, the award of which is imminent. Representatives of these
companies — Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX — offered their
perspectives. Click here.
(8/26)
Antares Could Be Ready for
Sun-synchronous Launches Next Year (Source: Space News)
Orbital Sciences Corp. expects to have U.S. government approval within
about a year for using its Antares rocket to launch payloads to
sun-synchronous orbit from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s
eastern shore, a company executive said. “We’ve been working with NASA,
the FAA and other agencies to get approval to fly high-inclination
missions from the Wallops site,” said John Steinmeyer, a senior program
manager at Orbital.
The earliest possible date for such a mission is still “a year or so
out,” Steinmeyer said. Orbital has not identified any candidate
payloads for a sun-synchronous launch. “Orbital has expressed an
interest to NASA Wallops in flying southward to a
higher-inclination/sun-synchronous orbit, though no specific mission or
date has been proposed to the range,” NASA spokesman Jeremy Eggers
wrote in an Aug. 7 email. “As far as what Orbital would need to do to
fly this trajectory, that would depend on the details of the mission.”
(8/25)
Musk Offers Statement on Launch Delay
(Source: SpaceX)
“SpaceX has decided to postpone tomorrow's flight of AsiaSat 6. We are
not aware of any issue with Falcon 9, nor the interfaces with the
Spacecraft, but have decided to review all potential failure modes and
contingencies again. We expect to complete this process in one to two
weeks.
“The natural question is whether this is related to the test vehicle
malfunction at our development facility in Texas last week. After a
thorough review, we are confident that there is no direct link. Had the
same blocked sensor port problem occurred with an operational Falcon 9,
it would have been outvoted by several other sensors. That voting
system was not present on the test vehicle.
“What we do want to triple-check is whether even highly improbable
corner case scenarios have the optimal fault detection and recovery
logic. This has already been reviewed by SpaceX and multiple outside
agencies, so the most likely outcome is no change. If any changes are
made, we will provide as much detail as is allowed under U.S. law.”
(8/26)
Roscosmos Requests $155 Million to
Help Europe Get to Mars (Source: Moscow Times)
Russian space agency Roscosmos needs 5.6 billion rubles ($155 million)
to complete its share of a large-scale joint Mars exploration project
with the European Space Agency (ESA), Interfax reported. The project,
called ExoMars, began as a joint project between the ESA and NASA to
send a pair of unmanned probes to Mars. But in 2012, budget cuts in
Washington forced NASA to withdraw from the project, and Roscosmos was
quickly tapped as a replacement.
One of the key objectives of the ExoMars mission is to search for life
on the Red Planet. The mission involves two stages: one in 2016 and
another in 2018. In both, unmanned probes will hitch rides on Russian
Proton rockets. Such rockets, however, have seen a number of launch
failures in the last three years.
The requested $155 million will pay for the two launches, as well as
finance the completion of the 2018 ExoMars lander, which is being
designed by Russia and outfitted largely with Russian scientific
equipment, according to a draft federal space strategy for 2016-2025.
(8/26)
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