A bi-partisan group of 14 Congressmen has sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James raises questions about the certification of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in the wake of the launch failure last month.

The representatives questioned whether it made sense for SpaceX to lead the investigation of its own accident, which resulted in a loss of a Dragon cargo ship headed for the International Space Station. The FAA is providing oversight of the investigation.

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — Engineers in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently tested the mechanisms that will connect future commercial crew spacecraft with the second International Docking Adapter. IDA-2, as it’s called, will be taken to the space station on a future cargo resupply mission. It will be one of two connection points for commercial crew spacecraft visiting the orbiting […]

Statement by Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO David F. Melcher on the Senate passage of the Transportation Bill with Ex-Im Bank Amendment. Arlington, Va. — The Aerospace Industries Association is very pleased that the Senate has attached an amendment reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank of the United States to the Transportation bill that passed the Senate today. Ex-Im Bank supports roughly 164,000 American jobs across the United States and is […]

It’s been no secret that Russia’s $3 billion Vostochny spaceport has experienced its fair share of corruption, what with alleged embezzler having been captured in Balarus driving around a diamond-encrusted Mercedes and working going unpaid for months at a time. Earlier this week, Russia’s Prosecutor General revealed the true extent of the theft uncovered thus far: a whopping 7.5 billion rubles ($126 million) has been stolen. That’s 4.2 percent of […]

Some good news for NASA came last week when the Russian government formally committed to operating the International Space Station until 2024. The orbiting facility had been previously slated to be decommissioned in 2020. The Russian space agency Roscosmos is reportedly to have fought hard for the four-year extension despite tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine. Earlier this year, the Canadian government agreed to continue participating in […]

Russia will put its troubled Proton booster back in operation late next month after a three-0month stand down that followed the launch vehicle’s latest failure in mid-May. A Proton-M rocket is set to liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Aug. 28 with the Inmarsat-5F3 communications satellite. On May 16, an engine failure on a Proton booster destroyed the MexSat 1 satellite. Proton has been the most troubled of Russian boosters […]

CuSPP+ (Credit: SwRI)

GREENBELT, Md. (NASA PR) —  Another CubeSat mission involving significant contributions from Goddard scientists has won a berth on NASA’s Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) in 2018. The pint-size spacecraft will be one of the first to venture into interplanetary space.

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MOJAVE, Calif. (Scaled Composites PR) — Our business is to design prototype, cutting-edge aircraft.  Safety has always been a critical component of Scaled’s culture and, as the NTSB noted today, our pilots were experienced and well-trained.  As part of our constant and continuing efforts to enhance our processes, we have already made changes in the wake of the accident to further enhance safety.  We will continue to look for additional […]

Pete Siebold under canopy approaches the desert floor. (Credit: Mark Greenberg/Virgin Galactic/NTSB)

Mr. Greenberg is a professional photographer who was hired by Virgin Galactic to photograph the flight test of SpaceShipTwo last October while airborne from an Extra 300 chase aircraft. Greenberg’s photos captured pilot Pete Siebold’s descent to the desert floor after he was thrown free after the spaceship broke up. He was using two still cameras and operating a GoPro Hero in video mode during the accident event.

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Engine start on SpaceShipTwo. (Credit: Scaled Composites/NTSB)

The following sequence is extracted from a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) document about the loss of SpaceShipTwo last October. The images show the breakup of the vehicle from a camera on one of the tail booms. The premature unlocking of the feather mechanism resulted in aerodynamic pressures deploying the movable tail booms during powered ascent.

NTSB experts did the annotation on the photos and the narrative that accompanies the images. The sequence spans 3 seconds.

Figure 62 (Credit: Scaled Composites/NTSB)

Figure 62 is the last frame exported from the recording that shows the feather in a undeployed and nominal position. A vertical line was drawn at the intersection of the right boom’s leading edge and the contour of the upper fuselage structure to illustrate the feather’s relative position. In every frame prior to this, the feather position is nominal. By figure 62 and forward, the exported images show positive feather movement indicated by the incongruity between the vertical line and the relative position of the right boom’s leading edge and the contour of the fuselage.

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